m. 


GIFT  or 

MICHAEL  REE^E 


INTERPRETATIONS   OF  POETRY 
AND  RELIGION 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


THE  SENSE  OF  BEAUTY:  Being  the 
Outlines  of  ytsthetic  Theory    .    .    $1.50 


INTERPRETATIONS 


or 


POETRY  AND  RELIGION 


BY 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA 


i 


NEW  YORK 
CHAELES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1900 


COPYRIGHT,   1900,    BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


VfAcdC 


Nnrfaootf  53«g3 

J,  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

The  following  volume  is  composed  of  a  number 
of  papers  written  at  various  times  and  already  par- 
tially printed ;  they  are  now  revised  and  gathered 
together  in  the  hope  that  they  may  lead,  the  reader, 
from  somewhat  different  points  of  approach,  to  a 
single  idea.  This  idea  is  that  religion  and  poetry 
are  identical  in  essence,  and  differ  merely  in  the 
way  in~which  they  are  attached  to  practical  affairs. 
Poetry  is  called  religion  when  it  intervenes  in  life^ 
and  religion,  when  it  merely  supervenes  upon  life,. 
is  seenJo_beji£LlMngJbutj2oe^^ 
^  It  would  naturally  follow  from  this  conception 
that  religious  doctrines  would  do  well  to  withdraw 
their  pretension  to  be  dealing  with  matters  of  fact. 
That  pretension  is  not  only  the  source  of  the  con- 
flicts of  religion  with  science  and  of  the  vain  and 
bitter  controversies  of  sects ;  it  is  also  the  cause  of 
the  impurity  and  incoherence  of  religion  in  the 
soulj,  when  it  seeks  its_sanciljQns-m^the"&phere  off 
reality,  and  forgets  that  its  proper  concern  is  toj 
express  the  ideal.  For  the  dignityjof  religion,  like 
that  of  poetry  and  of  every  moral  ideal,  lies  pre- 
cisely in  its  ideal  adequacy,  in  its  fit  rendering  of 


J 


n  PREFACE 

the  meanings  and  values  of  life,  in  its  anticipation 
of  perfection ;  so  that  the  excellence  of  religion  is 
due  to  an  idealization  of  experience  which,  while 
making  religion  noble  if  treated  as  poetry,  makes 
it  necessarily  false  if  treated  as  science.  Its  func- 
tion is  rather  to  draw  from  reality  materials  for  an 
image  of  that  ideal  to  which  reality  ought  to  con- 
form, and  to  make  us  citizens,  by  anticipation,  in 
the  world  we  crave. 

It  also  follows  from  our  general  conception  that 
poetry  has  a  universal  and  a  moral  function.  Its 
fudijoientary  essays  in  the  region  of  fancy  and 
pleasant  sound,  as  well  as  its  idealization  of  epi- 
sodes in  human  existence,  are  only  partial  exercises 
in  an  art  that  has  all  time  and  all  experience  for 
its  natural  subject-matter  and  all  the  possibilities 
of  being  for  its  ultimate  theme.  As  religion  is 
deflected  from  its  course  when  it  is  confused  with 
a  record  of  facts  or  of  natural  laws,  so  poetry  is 
arrested  in  its  development  if  it  remains  an  un- 
meaning plaj_of  fancy  without  relevance  to  the 
ideals  and  purposes  of  life.  In  that^relevance  lies 
its  highest  power.  As  its  elementary  pleasantness 
comes  from  its  response  to  the  demands  of  the  ear, 
so  its  deepest  beauty  comes  from  its  response  to 
the  ultimate  demands  of  the  soul. 

This  theory  can  hardly  hope  for  much  commen- 
dation either  from  the  apologists  of  theology  or 
from  its  critics.     The  mass  of  mankind  is  divided 


\ 


PREFACE  Vll 

into  two  classes,  the  Sancho  Panzas  who  have  a 
sense  for  reality,  but  no  ideals,  and  the  Don  Quix- 
otes with  a  sense  for  ideals,  but  mad.  The  expe- 
dient of  recognizing  facts  as  facts  and  accepting 
ideals  as  ideals,  —  and  this  is  all  we  propose, — 
although  apparently  simple  enough,  seems  to  elude 
the  normal  human  power  of  discrimination.  If, 
therefore,  the  champion  of  any  orthodoxy  should 
be  offended  at  our  conception,  which  would  reduce 
his  artful  cosmos  to  an  allegory,  all  that  could  be 
said  to  mitigate  his  displeasure  would  be  that  our 
view  is  even  less  favourable  to  his  opponents  than 
to  himself. 

The  liberal  school  that  attempts  to  fortify  re- 
ligion by  minimizing  its  expression,  both  theoretic 
and  devotional,  seems  from  this  point  of  view 
to  be  merely  impoverishing  religious  symbols  and 
vulgarizing  religious  aims ;  it  subtracts  from  faith! 
that  imagination  by  v/hich  faith  becomes  an  in-] 
terpretation  and  idealization  of  human  life,  and 
retains  only  a  stark  and  superfluous  principle  of 
superstition.  For  meagre  and  abstract  as  may  be 
the  content  of  such  a  religion,  it  contains  all  the 
venom  of  absolute  pretensions ;  it  is  no  less  cursed 
than  the  more  developed  systems  with  a  contro- 
versial unrest  and  with  a  consequent  undertone  of 
constraint  and  suspicion.  It  tortures  itself  with 
the  same  circular  proofs  in  its  mistaketi  ambition 
to  enter  the  plane  of  vulgar  reality  and  escape  its 


Vm  PREFACE 

native  element  of  ideas.  It  casts  a  greater  blight 
than  would  a  civilized  orthodoxy  on  any  joyous 
freedom  of  thought.  For  the  respect  exacted  by 
an  establishment  is  limited  and  external,  and  not 
greater  than  its  traditional  forms  probably  deserve, 
as  normal  expressions  of  human  feeling  and  apt 
symbols  of  moral  truth.  A  reasonable  deference 
once  shown  to  authority,  the  mind  remains,  under 
such  an  establishment,  inwardly  and  happily  free ; 
the  conscience  is  not  intimidated,  the  imagination 
is  not  tied  up.  But  the  preoccupations  of  a  hun- 
gry and  abstract  fanaticism  poison  the  liberty  nomi- 
nally allowed,  bias  all  vision,  and  turn  philosophy 
itself,  which  should  be  the  purest  of  delights  and 
consolations,  into  an  obsession  and  a  burden  to  the 
soul.  In  such  a  spectral  form  religious  illusion 
does  not  cease  to  be  illusion.  Mythology  cannot 
become  science  by  being  reduced  in  bulk,  but  it 
may  cease,  as  a  mythology,  to  be  worth  having. 

On  the   other  hand,  the  positivistic   school  of 
criticism  would   sennij  if  our   theory  is  right,  to 
have    overlooked   in   its    programme   the  highest 
functions  of  human  nature.     The  environing  world 
y,n  ^an  justify  itself  to  the  mind  only  by  the  free  life 
\    *  which  it  fosters  there.     All  observation  is  observa- 
■Xtion  of  brute  fact,  all  discipline  is  mere  repression, 
until  these  facts  digested  and  this  discipline  em- 
_Jaodied  in  humane  impulses  become  the  starting- 
point  for  a  creative  movement  of  the  imagination,    ) 


PREFACE  IX 

the  firm  basis  for  ideal  constructions  in  society, 
religion,  and  art.  Only  as  conditions  of  these 
human  activities  can  the  facts  of  nature  and  his- 
tory become  morally  intelligible  or  practically  im- 
portant. In  themselves  they  are  trivial  incidents, 
gossip  of  the  Fates,  cacklings  of  their  inexhaust- 
ible garrulity.  To  regard  the  function  of  man  as 
accomplished  when  these  chance  happenings  have 
been  recorded  by  him  or  contributed  to  by  his 
impulsive  action,  is  to  ignore  his  reason,  his  privi- 
lege, —  shared  for  the  rest  with  every  living  crea- 
ture, —  of  using  Nature  as  food  and  substance  for 
his  own  life.  This  human  life  is  not  merely 
animal  and  passionate.  The  best  and  keenest 
part  of  it  consists  in  that  very  gift  of  creation  and 
government  which,  together  with  all  the  transcen- 
dental functions  of  his  own  mind,  man  has  signifi- 
cantly attributed  to  God  as  to  his  highest  ideal. 
Not  to  see  in  this  rational  activity  the  purpose  and 
standard  of  all  life  is  to  have  left  human  nature, 
half  unread.  It  is  to  look  to  the  removal  of  cer- 
tain incidental  obstacles  in  the  work  of  reason  as 
to  the  solution  of  its  positive  tasks.  In  compariso»«^ 
with  such  apathetic  naturalism,  all  the  errors  and 
follies  of  religion  are  worthy  of  indulgent  sympathy, 
since  they  represent  an  effort,  however  misguided, 
to  interpret  and  to  use  the  materials  of  experience 
for  moral  ends,  and  to  measure  the  value  ^f  reality 
by  its  relation  to  the  ideal. 


} 


X  PKEFACE 

The  moral  function  of  the  imagination  and  the 
poetic  nature  of  religion  form,  then,  the  theme  of 
the  following  pages.  It  may  not  be  amiss  to 
announce  it  here,  as  the  rather  miscellaneous  sub- 
jects of  these  essays  might  at  first  sight  obscure 
the  common  import  of  them  all. 


CONTENTS 

yj.    Understanding,  Imagination,  AND  Mysticism  1 

II.     The  Hombeic  Hymns 24 

III.  The  Dissolution  of  Paganism       .        .        .  49 

IV.  The  Poetry  of  Christian  Dogma         .        .  76 
!/  V.     Platonic  Love  in  Some  Italian  Poets  118 

VI.     The  Absence  of  Religion  in  Shakespeare  147 

VII.     The  Poetry  of  Barbarism    ....  166 

VIII.     Emerson .        .217 

^IX.     A  Religion  op  Disillusion    ....  234 

•,  X.     The  Elements  and  Function  of  Poetry     .  251 

sd 


UNDEESTANDING,  IMAGINATION,  AND 
MYSTICISM 

When  we  consider  the  situation  of  the  human 
mind  in  Nature,  its  limited  plasticity  and  few- 
channels  of  communication  with  the  outer  world, 
we  need  not  wonder  that  we  grope  for  light,  or 
that  we  find  incoherence  and  instability  in  human 
systems  of  ideas.  The  wonder  rather  is  that  we 
have  done  so  well,  that  in  the  chaos  of  sensations 
and  passions  that  fills  the  mind,  we  have  found 
any  leisure  for  self-concentration  and  reflection, 
and  have  succeeded  in  gathering  even  a  light 
harvest  of  experience  from  our  distracted  labours. 
Our  occasional  madness  is  less  wonderful  than  our 
occasional  sanity.  Eelapses  into  dreams  are  to 
be  expected  in  a  being  whose  brief  existence  is 
so  like  a  dream;  but  who  could  have  been  sure 
of  this  sturdy  and  indomitable  perseverance  in 
the  work  of  reason  in  spite  of  all  checks  and 
discouragements  ? 

The  resources  of  the  mind  are  not  commensurate 
with  its  ambition.     Of  the  five  senses,  three  are  of 

B  1 


2  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

little  use  in  the  formation  of  permanent  notions: 
a  fourth,  sight,  is  indeed  vivid  and  luminous,  but 
furnishes  transcripts  of  things  so  highly  coloured 
and  deeply  modified  by  the  medium  of  sense,  that 
a  long  labour  of  analysis  and  correction  is  needed 
before  satisfactory  conceptions  can  be  extracted 
from  it.  For  this  labour,  however,  we  are  en- 
dowed with  the  requisite  instrument.  We  have 
memory  and  we  have  certain  powers  of  synthesis, 
abstraction,  reproduction,  invention,  —  in  a  word, 
we  have  understanding.  But  this  faculty  of  un- 
derstanding has  hardly  begun  its  work  of  decipher- 
ing the  hieroglyphics  of  sense  and  framing  an 
idea  of  reality,  when  it  is  crossed  by  another 
faculty — the  imagination.  Perceptions  do  not  re- 
main in  the  mind,  as  would  be  suggested  by  the 
trite  simile  of  the  seal  and  the  wax,  passive  and 
changeless,  until  time  wear  off  their  sharp  edges 
and  make  them  fade.  No,  perceptions  fall  into 
the  brain  rather  as  seeds  into  a  furrowed  field  or 
even  as  sparks  into  a  keg  of  powder.  Each  image 
breeds  a  hundred  more,  sometimes  slowly  and  sub- 
terraneously,  sometimes  (when  a  passionate  train 
is  started)  with  a  sudden  burst  of  fancy.  The 
•mind,  exercised  by  its  own  fertility  and  flooded  by 
its  inner  lights,  has  infinite  trouble  to  keep  a  true 
reckoning  of  its  outward  perceptions.  It  turns 
from  the  frigid  problems  of  observation  to  its  own 
visions  J  it  forgets  to  watch  the  courses  of  what 


UNDERSTANDING   AND  IMAGINATION  3 

sh-ould  be  its  "pilot  stars."  Indeed,  were  it  not 
for  tlie  power  of  convention  in  which,  by  a  sort  of 
mutual  cancellation  of  errors,  the  more  practical 
and  normal  conceptions  are  enshrined,  the  imagina- 
tion would  carry  men  wholly  away,  —  the  best  men 
first  and  the  vulgar  after  them.  Even  as  it  is, 
individuals  and  ages  of  fervid  imagination  usually 
waste  themselves  in  dreams,  and  must  disappear 
before  the  race,  saddened  and  dazed,  perhaps,  6y 
the  memory  of  those  visions,  can  return  to  its 
plodding  thoughts. 
"{  Five  senses,  then,  to  gather  a  small  part  of  the 
infinite  influences  that  vibrate  in  Nature,  a  mod- 
erate power  of  understanding  to  interpret  those 
senses,  and  an  irregular,  passionate  fancy  to  over- 
lay that  interpretation  —  such  is  the  endowment 
of  the  human  mind.  And  what  is  its  ambition? 
Nothing  less  than  to  construct  a  picture  of  all 
reality,  to  comprehend  its  own  origin  and  that  of 
the  universe,  to  discover  the  laws  of  both  and 
prophesy  their  destiny.  Is  not  the  disproportion 
enormous  ?  Are  not  confusions  and  profound  con- 
tradictions to  be  looked  for  in  an  attempt  to  build 
so  much  out  of  so  little? 

Yet  the  metaphysical  ambition  we  speak  of  can- 
not be  abandoned,  because  whatever  picture  of 
things  we  may  carry  about  in  our  heads  we  are 
bound  to  regard  as  a  map  of  reality ;  although  we 
may  mark  certain  tracts  of  it  "unexplored  coun- 


4  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

try,"  the  very  existence  of  such  regions  is  vouched 
for  only  by  our  representation,  and  is  necessarily 
believed  to  correspond  to  our  idea.  All  we  can  do 
is,  without  abandoning  the  aspiration  to  knowledge 
which  is  the  inalienable  birthright  of  reason,. to 
control  as  best  we  may  the  formation  of  our  con- 
ceptions ;  to  arrange  them  according  to  their  deri- 
vation and  measure  them  by  their  applicability  in 
life,  so  prudently  watching  over  their  growth  that 
we  may  be  spared  the  deepest  of  sorrows  —  to  sur- 
vive the  offspring  of  our  own  thought. 

V  The  inadequacy  of  each  of  our  faculties  is  what 
occasions  the  intrusion  of  some  other  faculty  into 
its  field.  The  defect  of  sense  calls  in  imagination, 
the  defect  of  imagination  calls  in  reasoning,  the 
defect  of  reasoning  divination.     If  our  senses  were 

J  clairvoyant  and  able  to  observe  all  that  is  going  on 
in  the  world,  if  our  instincts  were  steady,  prompt- 
ing us  to  adequate  reactions  upon  these  observar 
tions,  the  fancy  might  remain  free.  We  should 
not  need  to  call  upon  it  to  piece  out  the  imperfec- 
tions of  sense  and  reflection,  but  we  should  employ 
it  only  in  avowed  poetry,  only  in  building  dream- 
worlds alongside  of  the  real,  not  interfering  with 
the  latter  or  confusing  it,  but  repeating  its  pat- 
tern with  as  many  variations  as  the  fertility  of 
our  minds  could  supply.  As  it  is,  the  imagination 
is  brought  into  the  service  of  sense  and  instinct, 
and  made  to  do  the  work  of  intelligence.      This 


UNDERSTANDING   AND   IMAGINATION  b 

substitution  is  the  more  readily  effected,  in  that 
imagination  and  intelligence  do  not  differ  in  their 
origin,  but  only  in  their  validity.  Understanding 
is  an  applicable  fiction,!'^  kind  of  wit  with  a  prac- 
tical use.  Common  sense  and  science  live  in  a 
world  of  expurgated  mythology,  such  as  Plato 
wished  his  poets  to  compose,  a  world  where  the 
objects  are  imaginative  in  their  origin  and  essence, 
but  useful,  abstract,  and  beneficent  in  their  sugges- 
tions. The  sphere  of  common  sense  and  science  is 
concentric  with  the  sphere  of  fancy ;  both  move  in 
virtue  of  the  same  imaginative  impulses.  The  even- 
tual distinction  between  intelligence  and  imagina- 
tion is  ideal ;  it  arises  when  we  discriminate  various 
functions  in  a  life  that  is  dynamically  one.  Those 
conceptions  which,  after  they  have  spontaneously 
arisen,  prove  serviceable  in  practice,  and  capable 
of  verification  in  sense,  we  call  ideas  of  the  under- 
standing. The  others  remain  ideas  of  the  imagina- 
tion. The  shortness  of  life,  the  distractions  of 
passion,  and  the  misrepresentation  to  which  all 
transmitted  knowledge  is  subject,  have  made  the 
testing  of  ideas  by  practice  extremely  slow  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  Hence  the  impurity  of  our  j 
knowledge,  its  confusion  with  fancy,  and  its  pain-/ 
f  ul  inadequacy  to  interpret  the  whole  world  of ' 
human  interests.  These  shortcomings  are  so  many 
invitations  to  foreign  powers  to  intervene,  so  many 
occasions  for  new  waves  of  imagination  to  sweep 


b  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

away  the  landmarks  of  our  old  labour,  and  flood 
the  whole  mind  with  impetuous  dreams. 

It  is  accordingly  the  profounder  minds  that  com- 
monly yield  to  the  imagination,  because  it  is  these 
minds  that  are  capable  of  feeling  the  greatness  of 
the  problems  of  life  and  the  inadequacy  of  the 
understanding,  with  its  present  resources,  to  solve 
them.  The  same  minds  are,  moreover,  often  swayed 
by  emotion,  by  the  ever-present  desire  to  find  a 
noble  solution  to  all  questions,  perhaps  a  solution 
already  hallowed  by  authority  and  intertwined  inex- 
tricably, for  those  who  have  always  accepted  it) 
with  the  sanctions  of  spiritual  life.  Such  a  coveted 
conclusion  may  easily  be  one  which  the  understand- 
ing, with  its  basis  in  sense  and  its  demand  for  veri- 
fication, may  not  be  able  to  reach.  \Therefore  the 
impassioned  soul  must  pass  beyond  the  understand- 
ing, or  else  go  unsatisfied ;  and  unless  it  be  as  dis- 
ciplined as  it  is  impassioned  it  will  not  tolerate 
dissatisfaction.  From  what  quarter,  then,  will  it 
^,/draw  the  wider  views,  the  deeper  harmonies,  which 
it  craves  ?  Only  from  the  imagination.  There  is 
no  other  faculty  left  to  invoke.  The  imagination, 
therefore,  must  furnish  to  religion  and  to  meta- 
physics those  large  i<i^s  tinctured  with  passion, 
those  supersensible  forms  Shrouded  in  awe,  in  which 
alone  a  mind  of  great  sweepr  and  vitality  can  find 
its  congenial  objects.  Thus  the  stone  which  the 
builder,  understanding,  rejected,  becomes  the  chief 


UNDERSTANDING   AND   IMAGINATION  7 

stone  of  the  corner;  the  intuitions  which  science 
could  not  use  remain  the  inspiration  of  poetry  and 
religion. 

The  imaginajtion,  when  thus  employed  to  antici-  ^ 
pate  or  correct  the  conclusions  of  the  understand- 
ing, is  of  course  not  called  imagination  by  those 
who  appeal  to  it.  The  religious .  teasksr^^call  it 
prophecy  or  revelatiop,  the  philosophers  call,  it  a 
higher  reason.  But  these  names  are  merely  eulo- 
gistic synonyms  for  imagination,  implying  (what  is 
perfectly  possible)  that  the  imagination  has  not 
misled  us.  They  imply  on  the  contrary  that  in  the 
given  instances  the  imagination  has  hit  upon  an 
ultimate  truth.  A  prophet,  unless  he  be  the  merely 
mechanical  vehicle  of  truths  he  does  not  under- 
stand, cannot  be  conceived  as  anything  but  a  man 
of  imagination,  whose  visions  miraciilously  mirror 
the  truth.  A  metaphysician  who  transcends  the 
intellect  by  his  reason  can  be  conceived  only  as 
using  his  imagination  to  such  good  purpose  as  to 
divine  by  it  the  ideal  laws  of  reality  or  the  ultimate 
goals  of  moral  effort.  His  reason  is  an  imagination 
that  succeeds,  an  intuition  that  guesses  the  principle 
of  experience.  But  if  this  intuition  were  of  such  a"^ 
nature  that  experience  could  verify  it,  then  that 
higher  reason  or  imagination  would  be  brought 
down  to  the  level  of  the  understanding ;  for  under- 
standing, as  we  have  defined  it,  is  itself  a  kind  of 
imagination,  an  imagination  prophetic  of  experience, 


»  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

/  a  spontaneity  of  thought  by  which  the  science  of 
*^  perception  is  turned  into  the  art  of  life.  The  same 
absence  of  verification  distinguishes  revelation  from 
science;  for  when  the  prophecies  of  faith  are  veri- 
fied, the  function  of  faith  is  gone.  Faith  and  the 
higher  reason  of  the  metaphysicians  are  therefore 
forms  of  imagination  believed  to  be  avenues  to 
truth,  as  dreams  or  oracles  may  sometimes  be  truth- 
ful, not  because  their  necessary  correspondence  to 
truth  can  be  demonstrated,  for  then  they  would  be 
portions  of  science,  but  because  a  man  dwelling  on 
those  intuitions  is  conscious  of  a  certain  moral 
transformation,  of  a  certain  warmth  and  energy 
of  life.  This  emotion,  heightening  his  ideas  and 
giving  them  power  over  his  will,  he  calls  faith  or 
high  philosophy,  and  under  its  dominion  he  is  able 
to  face  his  destiny  with  enthusiasm,  or  at  least  with 
composure. 

J  The  imagination,  even  when  its  premonitions  are 
not  wholly  justified  by  subsequent  experience,  has 
\  thus  a  noble  role  to  play  in  the  life  of  man.  With- 
out it  his  thoughts  would  be  not  only  far  too  narrow 
to  represent,  although  it  were  symbolically,  the 
greatness  of  the  universe,  but  far  too  narrow  even 
to  render  the  scope  of  his  own  life  and  the  condi- 
tions of  his  practical  welfare.  Without  poetry 
and  religion  the  history  of  mankind  would  have 
been  darker  than  it  is.  \,Niit_only  would  emotional 

,_^  life  have  been  poorer,  but  the  public  conscience, 


UNDERSTANDING   AND   IMAGINATION  9 

the  national  and  family  spirit,  so  useful  for  moral 
organization  and  discipline,  would  hardly  have  be- 
come articulate.  By  what  a  complex  and  unin- 
spired argumentation  would  the  pure  moralist  have 
to  insist  upon  those  duties  which  the  imagination 
enforces  so  powerfully  in  oaths  sworn  before  the 
gods,  in  commandments  written  by  the  finger  of 
God  upon  stone  tablets,  in  visions  of  hell  and 
^heaven,  in  chivalrous  love  and  loyalty,  and  in  the 
sense  of  family  dignity  and  honouj^?  What  intri- 
cate, what  unavailing  appeals  to  positive  interests 
would  have  to  be  made  before  those  quick  reactions 
could  be  secured  in  large  bodies  of  people  which 
can  be  produced  by  the  sight  of  a  flag  or  the  sound 
of  a  name?  The  imagination  is  the  great  unifiei;/ 
0^ humanity.  Men's  perceptions  may  be  various,' 
their  powers  of  understanding  very  unequal;  but^t 
the  imagination  is,  as  it  were,  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  instinct,  the  contribution  which  the  inner 
capacity  and  demand  of  the  mind  makes  to  ex- 
perience. To  indulge  the  imagination  is  to  express 
the  universal  self,  the  common  and  contagious  ele- 
ment in  all  individuals,  that  rudimentary  potency 
which  they  all  share.  To  stimulate  the  imagina-  * 
tion  is  to  produce  the  deepest,  the  most  pertina- 
cious emotions.  To  repress  it  is  to  chill  the  soul, 
so  that  even  the  clearest  perception  of  the  truth 
remains  without  the  joy  and  impetuosity  of  convic- 
tion. 


10  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

The  part  played  by  imagination  is  thus  indis- 
pensable ;  but  obviously  the  necessity  and  benefi- 
cence of  this  contribution  makes  the  dangers  of 
it  correspondingly  great.  Wielding  a  great  power, 
exercising  an  omnipresent  function,  the  imagina- 
tion may  abuse  a  great  force.  While  its  inspira- 
tions coincide  with  what  would  be  the  dictates 
of  reason,  were  reason  audible  in  the  world,  all 
is  well,  and  the  progress  of  man  is  accelerated  hji 
his  visions  ;  but  being  a  principle  a  priori  the  im- 
agination is  an  irresponsible  principle ;  its  right- 
ness  is  an  inward  rightness,  and  everything  in  the 
real  world  may  turn  out  to  be  disposed  otherwise 
than  as  it  would  wish.  Our  imaginative  precon- 
ceptions are  then  obstacles  to  the  perception  of 
fact  and  of  rational  duty;  the  faith  that  stiimi- 
lated  our  efforts  and  increased  our  momentum, 
multiplies  our  wanderings.  The  too  hasty  organi- 
zation of  our  thoughts  becomes  the  cause  of  their 
more  prolonged  disorganization,  for  to  the  natural 
obscurity  of  things  and  the  difficulty  of  making 
them  fit  together  among  themselves,  we  add  the 
cross  lights  of  our  prejudices  and  the  impossibility 
of  fitting  reality  into  the  frame  we  have  made  for 
it  in  our  ignorance  of  its  constitution  and  extent. 
And  as  we  love  our  hopes,  and  detest  the  experi- 
ence that  seems  to  contradict  them,  we  add  fanati- 
cism  to  our  confusion.  CXlie  habits  of  the  imagina- 
tion, in  conflict  with  the  facts  of  sense,  thus  come 


UNDERSTANDING  AND   IMAGINATION         ll 

to  cloud  science  with,  passion,  with  Action,  with 
sentimental  prejudice.'  Nor  is  this  the  end  of 
our  troubles.  For  Imagination  herself  suffers  vio- 
lence in  this  struggle ;  she  seeks  to  reduce  herself 
to  conformity  with  existence,  in  the  hope  of  vindi- 
cating her  nominal  authority  at  the  price  of  some 
concessions.  She  begins  to  feign  that  she  de- 
manded nothing  but  what  she  finds.  Thus  she 
loses  her  honesty  and  freedom,  becomes  a  flatterer 
of  things  instead  of  the  principle  of  their  ideal 
correction,  and  in  the  attempt  to  prove  herself 
prophetic  and  literally  valid  (as  in  a  moment  of 
infatuation  she  had  fancied  herself  to  be)  she  for- 
feits that  symbolic  truth,  that  inner  propriety, 
which  gave  her  a  moral  value.  Thus  the  false 
steps  of  the  imagination  lead  to  a  contorted  science 
and  to  a  servile  ideal. 

These  complications  not  unnaturally  inspire  dis- 
couragement and  a  sense  of  the  hopeless  relativity 
of  human  thought.  Indeed,  if  there  be  any  special 
endowment  of  mind  and  body  called  human  nature, 
as  there  seems  to  be,  it  is  obvious  that  all  human 
experience  must  be  relative  to  that.  But  the  truth, 
the  absolute  reality,  surrounds  and  precedes  these 
operations  of  finite  faculty.  What  value,  then,  we 
may  say,  have  these  various  ideals  or  perceptions, 
or  the  conflicts  between  them  ?  Are  not  our  senses 
as  human,  as  "  subjective  "  as  our  wills  ?  Is  not 
the  understanding  as  visionary  as  the  fancy  ?    Does 


12  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

it  not  transform  the  Unknowable  into  as  remote  a 
symbol  as  does  the  vainest  dream  ? 
— •  The  answer  which  a  rational  philosophy  would 
make  to  these  questions  would  be  a  double  one. 
It  is  true  that  every  idea  is  equally  relative  to 
human  nature  and  that  nothing  can  be  represented 
in  the  human  mind  except  by  the  operation  of 
human  faculties.  But  it  is  not  true  that  all  these 
products  of  human  ideation  are  of  equal  value, 
since  they  are  not  equally  conducive  to  human 
purposes  or  satisfactory  to  human  demands. 

The  impulse  that  would  throw  over  as  equally 
worthless  every  product  of  human  art,  because  it 
is  not  indistinguishable  from  some  alleged  external 
reality,  does  not  perceive  the  serious  self-contra- 
dictions under  which  it  labours.  In  the  first  place 
,  the  notion  of  an  external  reality  is  a  human  no- 

'  "^tion;  our  reason  makes  that  hypothesis,  and  its 
verification  in  our  experience  is  one  of  the  ideals 
of  science,  as  its  validity  is  one  of  the  assumptions 
of  daily  life.      In  throwing  over  all  human  ideas, 

"vT  because  they  are  infected  with  humanity,  all  human 
ideas  are  being  sacrificed  to  one  of  them  —  the  idea 
\of  an  absolute  reality.  If  this  idea,  being  human, 
deserved  that  such  sacrifices  should  be  made  for 
it,  have  the  other  notions  of  the  mind  no  rights  ? 
Furthermore,  even  if  we  granted  for  the  sake  of 
argument  a  reality  which  our  thoughts  were  es- 
sentially helpless  to  represent,  whence  comes  the 


UNDERSTANDING  AND   IMAGINATION        13 

duty  of  our  thoughts  to  represent  it?  Whence 
comes  the  value  of  this  unattainable  truth  ?  From 
an  ideal  of  human  reason.  We  covet  truth.  So 
that  the  attempt  to  surrender  all  human  science 
as  relative  and  all  human  ideals  as  trivial  is 
founded  on  a  blind  belief  in  one  human  idea  and 
an  absolute  surrender  to  one  human  passion. 

In  spite  of  these  contradictions,  which  only  a 
dispassionate  logic  could  thoroughly  unravel,  the 
enthusiast  is  apt  to  rush  on.  The  vision  of  abso- 
lute truth  and  absolute  reality  intoxicates  him,  and 
as  he  is  too  subtle  a  thinker,  too  inward  a  man,  to 
accept  the  content  of  his  senses  or  the  conventions 
of  his  intelligence  for  unqualified  verities,  he  for- 
tifies himself  against  them  with  the  consciousness 
of  their  relativity,  and  seeks  to  rise  above  them 
in  his  meditations.  But  to  rise  to  what  ?  To  some 
more  elaborate  idea  ?  To  some  object,  like  a  scien- 
tific cosmos  or  a  religious  creed,  put  together  by\ 
longer  and  more  indirect  processes  than  those  of  \ 
common  perception?  Surely  not.  If  I  renounce  J 
my  senses  and  vulgar  intellect  because  they  are 
infected  with  finitude  and  smell  of  humanity,  how 
shall  I  accept  a  work  of  art,  a  product  of  reason- 
ing, or  an  idol  made  originally  with  hands  and 
now  encrusted  all  over,  like  the  statue  of  Glaucus, 
with  traditional  accretions  ?  Poetry,  science,  and 
religion,  in  their  positive  constructions,  are  more  • 
human,  more  conditioned,  than  are  the  senses  and  V 


% 


14  POETEY   AND  RELIGION 

the  common  understanding  themselves.  The  lover 
of  inviolate  reality  must  not  look  to  them.  If  the 
data  of  human  knowledge  must  be  rejected  as  sub- 
jective, how  much  more  should  we  reject  the  in- 
ferences made  from  those  data  by  human  thought. 
The  vKay  of  true  wisdom,  therefore,  if  true  wisdom 
is  to  deal  with  the  Absolute,  can  only  lie  in  absten- 
tion: neither  the  senses  nor  the  common  under- 
standing, and  much  less  the  superstructure  raised 
upon  these  by  imagination,  logic,  or  tradition,  must 
delude  us :  we  must  keep  our  thoughts  fixed  upon 
the  inanity  of  all  this  in  comparison  with  the  un- 
thinkable truth,  with  the  undivided  and  unimagi- 
nable reality.  Everything,  says  the  mystic,  is 
nothing,  in  comparison  with  the  One. 

This  confusion,  the  logical  contradiction  of  which 
we  have  just  seen,  may,  for  lack  of  a  more  specific 
word,  be  called  mysticism.  It  consists  in  the  sur- 
render of  a  category  of  thought  on  account  of  the 
discovery  of  its  relativity.  If  I  saw  or  reasoned 
or  judged  by  such  a  category,  I  should  be  seeing, 
reasoning,  or  judging  in  a  specific  manner,  in  a 
manner  conditioned  by  my  finite  nature.  But  the 
specific  and  the  finite,  I  feel,  are  odious;  let  me 
therefore  aspire  to  see,  reason  and  judge  in  no  spe- 
cific or  finite  manner  —  that  is,  not  to  see,  reason  or 
judge  at  all.  So  I  shall  be  like  the  Infinite,  nay 
I  shall  become  one  with  the  Infinite  and  (marvel- 
lous thought !)  one  with  the  One. 


:t- 


UNDERSTANDING  AND   IMAGINATION         15 

/ 
The  ideal  of  mysticism   is  accordingly  exactly 

contrary  to  the  ideal  of  reason ;  instead  of  perfect- 
ing human  nature  it  seeks  to  abolish  it ;  instead 
of  building  a  better  world,  it  would  undermine 
the  foundations  even  of  the  world  we  have  built 
already ;  instead  of  developing  our  mind  to  greater 
scope  and  precision,  it  would  return  to  the  condi- 
tion of  protoplasm  —  to  the  blessed  consciousness 
of  an  Unutterable  Eeality.  In  the  primary  stages, 
of  course,  mysticism  does  not  venture  to  abolish 
all  our  ideas,  or  to  renounce  all  our  categories  of 
thought.  Thus  many  Christian  mystics  have  still 
clung,  out  of  respect  for  authority,  to  traditional 
theology,  and  many  philosophical  mystics  have 
made  some  room  for  life  and  science  in  the  post- 
scripts which  they,  like  Parmenides,  have  appended 
to  the  blank  monism  of  their  systems.  But  such 
concessions  or  hesitations  are  inconsistent  with  the 
mystical  spirit  which  will  never  be  satisfied,  ifl 
fully  developed  and  fearless,  with  anything  short] 
of  Absolute  Nothing.  ' 

For  the  very  reason,  however,  that  mysticism 
is  a  tendency  to  obliterate  distinctions,  a  partial 
mysticism  often  serves  to  bring  out  with  wonder-  - 
ful- intensity  those  underlying  strata  of  experienced^ 
which  it  has  not  yet  decomposed.  The  razing  of 
the  edifice  of  reason  may  sometimes  discover  its 
foundations.  Or  the  disappearance  of  one  depart- 
ment of  activity  may  throw  the  mind  with  greater 


16  POETRY    AND   RELIGION 

energy  into  another.  So  Spinoza,  who  combined 
mysticism  in  morals  with  rationalism  in  science, 
can  bring  out  the  unqualified  naturalism  of  his 
system  with  a  purity  and  impressiveness  impossi- 
ble to  men  who  still  retain  an  ideal  world,  and 
seek  to  direct  endeavour  as  well  as  to  describe  it. 
Having  renounced  all  ideal  categories,  Spinoza  has 
only  the  material  categories  left  with  which  to 
cover  the  ground.  He  thus  acquires  all  the  con- 
centrated intensity,  all  the  splendid  narrowness, 
which  had  belonged  to  Lucretius,  while  his  mysti- 
cal treatment  of  the  spheres  which  Lucretius  sim- 
ply ignored,  gives  him  the  appearance  of  a  greater 
profundity.  So  an  ordinary  Christian  who  is  mys- 
tical, let  us  say,  about  time  and  space,  may  use 
his  transcendentalism  in  that  sphere  to  intensify 
his  positivism  in  theolog}^,  and  to  emphasize  his 
whole-souled  surrender  to  a  devout  life. 

What  is  impossible  is  to  be  a  transcendentalist 
"  all  'round."  In  that  case  there  would  be  nothing 
left  to  transcend ;  the  civil  war  of  the  mind  would 
have  ended  in  the  extermination  of  all  parties.  The 
art  of  mysticism  is  to  be  mystical  in  spots  and  to  aim 
the  heavy  guns  of  your  transcendental  philosophy 
against  those  realities  or  those  ideas  which  you 
find  particularly  galling,  Planted  on  your  dearest 
dogma,  on  your  most  precious  postulate,  you  may 
then  transcend  everything  else  to  your  heart's  con- 
tent.    You  may  say  with  an  air  of  enlightened 


UNDERSTANDING   AND  IMAGINATION         17 

profundity  that  nothing  is  "  really  "  right  or  wrong, 
because  in  Nature  all  things  are  regular  and  neces- 
sary, and  God  cannot  act  for  purposes  as  if  his 
will  were  not  already  accomplished;  your  mys- 
ticism in  religion  and  morals  is  kept  standing,  as 
it  were,  by  the  stiff  backing  which  is  furnished  by 
your  materialistic  cosmology.  Or  you  may  say 
with  a  tone  of  devout  rapture  that  all  sights  and 
sounds  are  direct  messages  from  Divine  Providence 
to  the  soul,  without  any  objects  "really"  existing 
in  space;  your  mysticism  about  the  world  of  per- 
ception and  scientific  inference  is  sustained  by  the 
naive  theological  dogmas  which  you  substitute  for 
the  conceptions  of  common  sense.  Yet  among 
these  partialities  and  blind  denials  a  man's  positive 
insight  seems  to  thrive,  and  he  fortifies  and  con- 
centrates himself  on  his  chosen  ground  by  his  arbi- 
trary exclusions.  The  patient  art  of  rationalizing 
the  various  sides  of  life,  the  observational  as  well 
as  the  moral,  without  confusing  them,  is  an  art 
apparently  seldom  given  to  the  haste  and  pugnacity 
of  philosophers. 

^Thus  mysticism,  although  a  principle  of  disso- 
lution, carries  with  it  the  safeguard  that  it  can 
never  be  consistently  applied.  We__reach_i^only 
in  exceptional  moments  of  intuition,  from  which 
we  descend  to  our  pots  and  pans  with  habits  and 
instincts  virtually  unimpaired,  Life  goes  on ;  vir- 
tues and   affections   endure,  none   the   worse,   the 


18  .  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

mystic  feels,  for  that  slight  film  of  unreality  which 
envelops  them  in  a  mind  not  unacquainted  with 
ecstasy.  And  although  mysticism,  left  free  to 
express  itself,  can  have  no  other  goal  than  Nir- 
vana, yet  moderately  indulged  in  and  duly  inhib- 
ited by  a  residuum  of  conventional  sanity,  it 
serves  to  give  a  touch  of  strangeness  and  eleva- 
tion to  the  character  and  to  suggest  superhuman 
gifts.  It  is  not,  however,  in  the  least  super- 
human. It  is  hardly  even  abnormal,  being  only 
/  An  exaggeration  of  a  rational  interest  in  the  high- 
est abstractions.  The  divine,  the  universal,  the 
absolute,  even  the  One,  are  legitimate  conceptions. 
They  are  terms  of  human  thought  having  as  such 
a  meaning  in  language  and  a  place  in  speculation. 
Those  who  live  in  the  mind,  whose  passions  are 
only  audible  in  the  keen  overtones  of  dialectic, 
are  no  doubt  exalted  and  privileged  natures,  choos- 
ing a  better  part  which  should  not  be  taken  from 
them.  So  the  poet  and  the  mathematician  have 
their  spheres  of  abstract  and  delicate  labour,  in 
which  a  liberal  legislator  would  not  disturb  them. 
Trouble  only  arises  when  the  dialectician  represents 
his  rational  dreams  as  knowledge  of  existences,  and 
the  mystic  his  excusable  raptures  as  the  only  way 
of  life.  Poets  and  mathematicians  do  not  imagine 
that  their  pursuits  raise  them  above  human  limi- 
tations and  are  no  part  of  human  life,  but  rather 
its  only  goal  and  justification.     Such  a  pretension 


UNDERSTANDING  AND  IMAGINATION        19 

would  be  regarded  as  madness  in  the  mathemati- 
cian or  the  poet;  and^ls  not  the  mjrstic_.a,s.^lll.isfir- 
ably  a  man  ?  Is  he  not  embodying,  at  his  best,  the 
analytic  power  of  a  logician,  or  the  imagination 
of  an  enthusiast,  and,  at  his  worst,  the  lowest  and 
most  obscure  passions  of  human  nature  ? 

Yes,  in  spite  of  himself,  the  mystic  remains 
human.  Nothing  is  more  normal  than  abstraction. 
A  contemplative  mind  drops  easily  its  practical 
preoccupations,  rises  easily  into  an  ideal  sympathy 
with  impersonal  things.  The  wheels  of  the  uni- 
verse have  a  wonderful  magnetism  for  the  human 
will.  Our  consciousness  likes  to  lose  itself  in  the 
music  of  the  spheres,  a  music  that  finer  ears  are 
sometimes  privileged  to  catch.  The  better  side  of 
mysticism  is  an  aesthetic  interest  in  large  unities 
and  cosmic  laws.  The  aesthetic  attitude  is  not  the* 
moral,  but  it  is  not  for  that  reason  illegitimate.  It 
gives  us  refreshment  and  a  foretaste  of  that  per- 
fect adaptation  of  things  to  our  faculties  and  of 
our  faculties  to  things  which,  could  it  extend  to 
every  part  of  experience,  would  constitute  the  ideal 
life.  Such  happiness  is  denied  us  in  the  concrete  j 
but  a  hint  and  example  of  it  may  be  gathered  by 
an  abstracted  element  of  our  nature  as  it  travels 
through  an  abstracted  world.  Such  an  indulgence 
adds  to  the  value  of  reality  only  such  value  as  it 
may  itself  have  in  momentary  experience;  it  may 
have  a  doubtful  moral  effect  on  the  happy  dreamer 


4. 


20  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

/S  himself.     But  it  serves  to  keep  alive  the  convic- 


f 


tion,  which  a  confused  experience  might  obscure, 
that  perfection  is  essentially  possible;  it  reminds 
us,  like  music,  that  there  are  worlds  far  removed 
from  the  actual  which  are  yet  living  and  very  near 
to  the  heart.     Such  is  the  fruit  of  abstraction  when 

\^/abstraction  bears  any  fruit.  If  the  imagination 
merely  alienates  us  from  reality,  without  giving 
us  either  a  model  for  its  correction  or  a  glimpse 
into  its  structure,  it  becomes  the  refuge  of  poetical 
selfishness.  Such  selfishness  is  barren,  and  the 
fancy,  feeding  only  on  itself,  grows  leaner  every 
day.  Mysticism  is  usually  an  incurable  disease. 
Facts  cannot  arouse  it,  since  it  never  denied  them. 
Eeason  cannot  convince  it,  for  reason  is  a  human 
faculty,  assuming  a  validity  which  it  cannot  prove. 
The  only  thing  that  can  kill  mysticism  is  its  own 
uninterrupted  progress,  by  which  it  gradually  de- 
—  vours  every  function  of  the  soul  and  at  last,  by 
destroying  its  own  natural  basis,  immolates  itself 
to  its  inexorable  ideal. 

Need  we  ask,  after  all  these  reflections,  where 
we  should  look  for  that  expansion  and  elevation  of 
the  mind  which  the  mystic  seeks  so  passionately 
and  so  unintelligently  ?    We  can  find  that  expan- 

/sion,  in  the  first  place,  in  the  imagination  itself. 
That  is  the  true  realm  of  man's  infinity,  where 
novelty  may  exist  without  falsity  and  perpetual 
diversity  without  contradiction.     But  such  exercise 


UNDERSTANDING  AND  IMAGINATION         21 

of  imagination  leaves  the  world  of  knowledge  un- 
touched. Is  there  no  escape  from  the  prison,  as 
the  mystic  thinks  it,  of  science  and  history  which 
shall  yet  not  carry  us  beyond  reality  ?  Is  there 
no  truth  beyond  conventional  truth,  no  life  behind 
human  existence  ? 

Certainly.     Behind  the  discovered  there  is  the  )r^ 
discoverable,  beyond  the  actual,  the  possible.     Sci- 
ence and  history  are  not  exhausted.     In  their  deter- 
minate directions  they  are  as  infinite  as  fancy  in  its 
indetermination..    The  spectacle  which  science  and 
history  now  spread  before  us  is  as  far  beyond  the 
experience  of  an  ephemeral  insect  as  any  Absolute 
can  be  beyond  our  own ;   yet  we  have   put  that 
spectacle  together  out  of  just  such  sensations  as 
the  insect  may  have  —  out  of  this  sunlight  and  this    / 
buzz  and  these  momentary  throbs   of    existence. 
The  understanding  has  indeed  supervened,  but  it 
has  supervened  not  to  deny  the  validity  of  those 
sensations,   but  to  combine   their  messages.     We 
may  still  continue  in  the  same  path,  by  the  indefi- 
nite extension  of  science  over  a  world  of  experience 
and  of  intelligible  truth.     Is  that  prospect  insuf- 
ficient for  our  ambition  ?     With  a  world  so  full    \ 
of  stuff  before  him,  I  can  hardly  conceive  what    /    ' 
morbid  instinct  can  tempt  a  man  to   look   else-    V 
where  for   wider  vistas,   unless    it  be  unwilling-      \ 
ness  to  endure  the  sadness  and  the^disdgline  oi  ^) 
the  truth. 


-<' 


22  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

But  can  our  situation  be  made  better  by  refusing 
to  understand  it?  If  we  renounced  mysticism 
altogether  and  kept  imagination  in  its  place,  should 
we  not  live  in  a  clearer  and  safer  world,  as  well  as 
in  a  truer  ?  Nay,  are  we  sure  that  this  gradually 
unfolding,  intelligible,  and  real  world  would  not  turn 
out  to  be  more  congenial  and  beautiful  than  any 
wilful  fiction,  since  it  would  be  the  product  of  a 
universal  human  labour  and  the  scene  of  the  ac- 
cumulated sufferings  and  triumphs  of  mankind? 
When  we  compare  the  temple  which  we  call  Nature, 
built  of  sights  and  sounds  by  memory  and  under- 
standing, with  all  the  wonderful  worlds  evocable 
by  the  magician's  wand,  may  we  not  prefer  the 
humbler  and  more  lasting  edifice,  not  only  as  a 
dwelling,  but  even  as  a  house  of  prayer  ?  It  is  not 
always  the  loftiest  architecture  that  expresses  the 
deepest  soul;  the  inmost  religion  of  the  Pagan 
haunted  his  hearth  as  that  of  the  Christian  his 
catacombs  or  his  hermitage.  So  philosophy  is 
more  spiritual  in  her  humility  and  abstinence  than 
in  her  short-lived  audacities,  and  she  would  do  well 
to  inscribe  over  her  gates  what,  in  an  ancient 
Spanish  church,  may  be  seen  written  near  the  steep 
entrance  to  a  little  subterraneous  crypt :  — 

"  Wouldst  thou  pass  this  lowly  door  ? 
Go,  and  angels  greet  thee  there; 
For  by  this  their  sacred  stair 
To  descend  is  still  to  soar. 


UNDERSTANDING  AND   IMAGINATION        23 

Bid  a  measured  silence  keep 
What  thy  thoughts  be  telling  o'er  ; 
Sink,  to  rise  with  wider  sweep 
To  the  heaven  of  thy  rest, 
For  he  climbs  the  heavens  best 
Who  would  touch  the  deepest  deep." 


^ 


II 

THE  HOMEKIC  HYMNS 

We  of  this  generation  look  back  upon  a  variety 
of  religious  conceptions  and  forms  of  worship,  and 
a  certain  unsatisfied  hunger  in  our  own  souls 
attaches  our  attention  to  the  spectacle.  We  ob- 
serve how  literally  fables  and  mysteries  were  once 
accepted  which  can  have  for  us  now  only  a  thin 
and  symbolical  meaning.  Judging  other  minds 
and  other  ages  by  our  own,  we  are  tempted  to  ask 
if  there  ever  was  any  fundamental  difference  be- 
tween religion  and  poetry.  Both  seem  to  consist 
in  what  the  imagination  adds  to  science,  to  history, 
and  to  morals.  Men  looked  attentively  on  the  face 
of  Nature :  their  close  struggle  with  her  compelled 
them  to  do  so :  but  before  making  statistics  of  her 
movements  they  made  dramatizations  of  her  life. 
The  imagination  enveloped  the  material  world,  as 
yet  imperfectly  studied,  and  produced  the  cosmos 
of  mythology.  "    ^ 

Thus  the  religion  of  the  Greeks  was,  we  might 
say,  nothing  but  poetry:  nothing  but  what  ijnagi- 
nation  added  to  thfi^mdiniejits.  of  science,  to  the 
24  """"'  ' 


THE   HOMERIC   HYMNS  25 

first  impressions  of  a  mind  that  pored  upon 
natural  phenomena  and  responded  to  them  with 
a  quick  sense  of  kinship  and  comprehension. 
The  religion  of  the  Hebrews  might  be  called 
poetry  WTEE~"as""*gbod  reasonT^^  Their  "sense  for 
con9!u3t"  and  their  vivid  interest  in  their  na- 
tional destiny' carried  thehT'past  any  prosaic  record 
of  events  or  cautious  theory  of  moral  and  social 
laws.  They  rose  at  once  into  a  bold  dramatic 
conception  of  their  race's  covenant  with  Heaven : 
just  such  a  conception  as  the  playwright  would 
seek  out  in  order  to  portray  with  awful  accel- 
eration the  ways  of  passion  and  fate.  Finally,  we 
have  apparently  a  third  kind  of  poetry  in  what 
has  been  the  "natural  religion  of  the  detached 
philosophers  of  all  ages.  In  them  the  iniagina- 
tioii  touches  the  precepts  of  morals  and  the  ideal^ 
of  reason,  attributing  to  them  a  larger  scope  and 
more  perfect  fulfilment^  than  experience  can  show 
them  to  have.  Philosophers  ever  tend  to  clothe 
the  harmonies  of  their  personal  thought  with 
universal  validity  and  to  assign  to  their  ideals 
a  latent  omnipotence  and  an  ultimate  victory  over 
the  forces  of  unreason.  This  which  is  obviously 
a  kind  of  poetry  is  at  the  same  time  the  spontane- 
ous religion  of  conscience  and  thought. 

Yet  religion  in  all  these  cases  differs  from  a 
mere  play  of  the  imagination  in  one  important 
respect;  it  reacts  directly  upon  life ;  it  is  a  factor 


V, 


26  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

in  conduct.  Our  religion  is  the  poetry  in  which 
we_  believe.  Mere  poetry  is  an  ineffectual  shadow 
of  life ;  ^reii^g^  is,  if  you  will,  a  phantom  also,  but 
a  phantom  guidi&.-  While  it  tends  to  its  own  ex- 
pansion, like  any  growth  in  the  imagination,  it 
tends  also  to  its  application  in  practice.  Such 
an  aim  is  foreign  to  poetry.  The  inspirations  of 
religi6n"demand  fidelity  and  courageous  response 
on  our  part.  Faith  brings  us  not  only  peace,  not 
only  the  contemplation  of  ideal  harmonies,  but 
labour  and  the  sword. '  These  two  tendencies  —  to 
imaginative  growth  and  to  practical  embodiment 
-^coexist  in  every  living  religion,  but  they  "arl 
not  always  equally  conspicuous.  In  the  formative 
ages  of  Christianity,  for  instance,  while  its  legends 
were  being  gathered  and  its  dogma  fixed,  the  im- 
aginative expansion  absorbed  men's  interest ;  later, 
when  the  luxuriant  branches  of  the  Church  began 
to  shake  off  their  foliage,  and  there  came  a  time 
of  year 

"  When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold," 

the  energy  of  religious  thought,  released  from  the 
enlargement  of  doctrine,  spent  itself  upon  a  more 
rigid  and  watchful  application  of  the  residuum  of 
faith. 

In  the   Pagan  religion  the  element  of  applica- 
bility might  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  lacking,  so 


.^w 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  27 

that  nothing  would  subsist  but  a  poetic  fable.  An 
unbiassed  study  of  antiquity,  however,  will  soon 
dispel  that  idea.  Besides  the  gods  whom  we  may 
plausibly  regard  as  impersonations  of  natural  forces, 
there  existed  others;  the  spirits  of  ancestors,  the 
gods  of  the  hearth,  and  the  ideal  patrons  of  war 
and  the  arts.  Even  the  gods  of  Nature  inspired 
reverence  and  secured  a  cultus  only  as  they  in- 
fluenced the  well-being  of  man.  The  worship  of 
|;hem  had  a  practical  import.  The  conception  of  Q 
their  nature  and  presence  became  a  sanction  and  n 
an  inspiration  in  the  conduct  of  life.  When  the  "^ 
figments  of  the  fancy  are  wholly  divorced  from 
reality  they  can  have  no  clearness  or  consistency ; 
they  can  have  no  permanence  when  they  are  wholly 
devoid  of  utility.  The  vividness  and  persistence 
of  the  figures  of  many  of  the  gods  came  from  the 
fact  that  they  were  associated  with  institutions 
and  practices  which  controlled  the  conception  of 
them  and  kept  it  young.  The  fictions  of  a  poet, 
whatever  his  genius,  do  not  produce  illusion  be- 
cause they  do  not  attach  themselves  to  realities 
in  the  world  of  action.  They  have  character  with- 
out power  and  names  without  local  habitations. 
The  gods  in  the  beginning  had  both.  Their  image, 
their  haunts,  the  reports  of  their  apparitions  and 
miracles,  gave  a  nucleus  of  empirical  reality  to 
the  accretions  of  legend.  The  poet  who  came  to 
sing  their  praise,  to  enlarge  upon  their  exploits. 


28  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

•and  to  explain  their  cultus,  gave  less  to  the  gods 
in  honour  than  he  received  from  them  in  inspira- 
tion. All  his  invention  was  guided  by  the  genius 
of  the  deity,  as  represented  by  the  traditions  of 
his  shrine.  This  poetry,  then,  even  in  its  most 
playful  mood,  is  not  mere  poetry,  but  religion.     It 

"^  is  a  poetry  in  which  men  believe;  it  is  a  poetry 
that  beautifies  and  justifies  to  their  minds  the 
positive  facts  of  their  ancestral  worship,  ^eir 
social  unity,  and  their  personal  conscience. 
'""Hiese  general  reflections  may  help  us  to  approach 
the  hymns  of  Homer  in  a  becoming  spirit.     For  in 

.     them  we  find  the  extreme  pf  „f ancy,  the  approach^ 
.  to  a  divorce  between  the  imagination  and  the  faith 

*  ofl;he  worshipper.  Consequently  there  is  danger 
that  we  may  allow  ourselves  to  read  these  lives  of 
the  gods  as  the  composition  of  a  profane  poet.  If 
we  did  so  we  should  fail  to  understand  not  only 
their  spirit  as  a  whole  but  many  of  their  parts,  in 
which  notes  are  struck  now  of  devotion  and  affec- 
tionate pride,  now  of  gratitude  and  entreaty.  These 
may  be  addressed,  it  is  true,  to  a  being  that  has 
just  been  described  as  guilty  of  some  signal  vice 
or  treachery,  and  the  contradiction  may  well  stag- 
ger a  Puritan  critic.  But  the  lusts  of  life  were 
once  for  all  in  the  blood  of  the  Pagan  gods,  who 
were  the  articulate  voices  of  Nature  and  of  passion. 
The  half-meant  exaggeration  of  a  well-known  trait 
in  the  divinity  would  not  render  the   poets  that 


THE   HOMERIC   HYMNS  29 

indulged  in  it  unwelcome  to  the  god ;  he  could  feel 
the  sure  faith  and  affection  of  his  worshippers  even 
in  their  good-humoured  laughter  at  his  imaginary- 
plights  and  naughtiness.  The  clown  was  not  ex- 
cluded from  these  rites.  His  wit  also  counted  as 
a  service. 

The  Homeric  Hymns,  if  we  may  trust  the  impres- 
sion if  hey  produced  a  modern,  are  not  hymns  and 
are  not  Homer's.  They  are  fragments  of  narrative 
Tn  luniC'Eexameter  recited  during  the  feasts  and 
fairs  at  various  Greek  shrines.  They  are  not  melo- 
dies^o  he  chanted  with  a  common  voice  by  the 
assemblage  during  a  sacrifice  ;  they  are  tales  deliv- 
ered by  the  minstrel  to  the  listening  audience  of 
citizens  and  strangers.  They  usually  have  a  local 
"reference.  Thus  we  find  under  the  title  ,of  a  hymn 
to  Apollo  a  song  of  Delos  and  one  of  Delphi. 
Delos  is  a  barren  rock ;  its  wealth  was  due  to  the 
temple  that  attracted  to  the  place  pilgrimages  and 
embassies,  not  without  rich  offerings,  from  many 
Greek  cities.  Accordingly  we  hear  how  Leto  or 
Latona,  when  about  to  become  the  mother  of  Apollo,* 
wandered  about  the  cities  and  mountains  of  Greece 
and  Asia,  seeking  a  birthplace  for  her  son.  None 
would  receive  her,  but  all  the  islands  trembled  at 
the  awful  honour  of  such  a  nativity,  profitable  as 
the  honour  might  eventually  prove,  — 

"Until  at  length 
The  lovely  goddess  came  to  Delos'  side 


30  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

And,  making  question,  spake  these  wing6d  words  : 

'  Delos,  were  it  thy  will  to  be  the  seat 

Of  my  young  son  Apollo,  brightest  god. 

And  build  him  a  rich  fane,  no  other  power 

Should  ever  touch  thee  or  work  ill  upon  thee. 

I  tell  thee  not  thou  shalt  be  rich  in  kine 

Or  in  fair  flocks,  much  fruit,  or  myriad  flowers ; 

But  when  Apollo  of  the  far-felt  dart 

Hath  here  his  shrine,  all  men  will  gather  here 

Bringing  thee  hecatombs.  .  .  .    And  though  thy  soil  be  poor, 

The  gods  shall  make  thee  strong  against  thy  foes.'  " 

The  spirit  of  the  island  is  naturally  not  averse 
to  so  favourable  a  proposition  but,  like  some  too 
humble  maiden  wooed  by  a  great  prince,  has  some 
misgivings  lest  this  promise  of  unexpected  good 
fortune  should  veil  the  approach  of  some  worse 
calamity.  "  When  the  god  is  born  into  the  light 
of  day,"  she  says,  "will  he  not  despise  me,  seeing 
how  barren  I  am,  and  sink  me  in  the  sea 

"That  ever  will 
Oppress  my  heart  with  many  a  watery  hill  ? 
And  therefore  let  him  choose  some  other  land. 
Where  he  shall  please,  to  build  at  his  command 
Temple  and  grove  set  thick  with  many  a  tree. 
For  wretched  polypuses  breed  in  me. 
Retiring  chambers,  and  black  sea-calves  den 
In  my  poor  soil,  for  penury  of  men."  ^ 

Leto  reassures  the  island,  however,  and  swears 
to  build  a  great  temple  there  which  her  son  will 
haunt  perpetually,  preferring  it  to  all  his  other 

1  Chapman's  version. 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  31 

shrines.  Delos  consents,  and  Apollo  is  born  amid 
the  ministrations  of  all  the  goddesses  except  Hera, 
who  sits  indignant  and  revengeful  in  the  solitudes 
of  Olympus.  The  child  is  bathed  in  the  stream 
and  delicately  swaddled ;  but  after  tasting  the  nec- 
tar and  ambrosia  which  one  of  the  nymphs  is  quick 
to  offer  him,  he  bursts  his  bands,  calls  for  his 
bow  and  his  lyre,  and  flies  upward  into  the  sky 
announcing  that  he  will  henceforth  declare  the  will 
of  Zeus  to  mortals.     Thereupon  — 

"  All  the  immortals  stood 
In  deep  amaze.  .  .  . 
All  Delos,  looking  on  him,  all  with  gold 
Was  loaded  straight,  and  joy'd  to  be  extoll'd. 
.  .  .  For  so  she  flourished,  as  a  hill  that  stood 
Crown'd  with  the  flower  of  an  abundant  wood."  i 

This  legend,  with  all  that  accompanies  it  con- 
cerning the  glories  of  Delos  and  its  gods,  and  the 
pilgrimages  and  games  that  enlivened  the  island, 
was  well-conceived  to  give  form  and  justification  to 
the  cultus  of  the  temple,  and  to  delight  the  vota- 
ries whom  custom  or  vague  instincts  of  piety  had 
gathered  there.  The  sacred  poet,  in  another  part 
of  this  hymn,  does  the  same  service  to  the  even 
greater  sanctuary  of  Delphi.  He  tells  us  how 
Apollo  wandered  over  many  lands  and  waters,  and 
he  stops  lovingly  to  recall  the  names  of  the  various 
spots  that  claimed  the  honour  of  having  at  some 

1  Chapman's  version. 


32  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

time  been  visited  by  the  god.  The  minstrels,  wan^ 
derers  themselves,  loved  to  celebrate  in  this  way 
the  shores  they  had  seen  or  heard  of,  and  to  fill 
at  the  same  time  their  listener's  minds  with  the 
spell  of  sonorous  names,  the  sense  of  space  and 
the  thrill  of  mystery.  In  his  journeys  Apollo, 
the  hymn  tells  us,  finally  came  to  the  dell  and 
fountain  of  Delphusa  on  the  skirts  of  Parnassus. 
The  nymph  of  the  spot,  fearing  the  encroachments 
of  so  much  more  powerful  a  deity,  deceived  him 
and  persuaded  him  to  plant  his  temple  on  another 
site,  where  Parnassus  fronts  the  west,  and  the 
overhanging  rocks  form  a  cavern.  There  Apollo 
established  his  temple  for  the  succour  and  enlight- 
enment of  mankind,  while  Trophonius  and  Aga- 
medes,  sons  of  Erginus,  men  dear  to  the  immortal 
gods,  built  the  approaches  of  stone. 

Thus  the  divine  origin  of  the  temple  is  vindi- 
cated, the  structure  described,  and  the  human  ar- 
chitects honoured,  whose  descendants,  very  likely, 
were  present  to  hear  their  ancestors'  praise.  But 
here  a  puzzling  fact  challenges  the  attention  and 
stimulates  the  fancy  of  the  poet:  Apollo  was  a 
Dorian  deity,  yet  his  chief  shrine  was  here  upon 
Phocian  ground.  Perhaps  some  traditions  re- 
mained to  suggest  an  explanation  of  the  anomaly ; 
at  any  rate  the  poet  is  not  at  a  loss  for  an  account 
of  the  matter.  The  temple  being  established, 
Apollo  bethought  himself  what  race  of  priests  he 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  83 

should  make  its  ministers:  at  least,  such  is  the 
naive  account  in  the  poem,  which  expects  us  to 
forget  that  temples  do  not  arise  in  the  absence  of 
predetermined  servants  and  worshippers.  While 
pondering  this  question,  however,  Apollo  cast  his 
eyes  on  the  sea  where  it  chanced  that  a  swift 
ship,  manned  by  many  and  excellent  Cretans,  was 
merrily  sailing:  whereupon  the  god,  taking  the 
form  of  a  huge  dolphin,  leapt  into  the  ship,  to  the 
infinite  surprise  and  bewilderment  of  those  worthy 
merchants,  who,  as  innocent  as  the  fishers  of  the 
Galilsean  Lake  of  the  religious  destiny  that  awaited 
them,  were  thinking  only  of  the  pecuniary  profits 
of  their  voyage.  The  presence  of  the  god  be- 
numbed their  movements,  and  they  stood  silent 
while  the  ship  sailed  before  the  wind.  And  the 
blast,  veering  at  this  place  with  the  changed  con- 
figuration of  the  coast,  blew  them  irresistibly  to 
the  very  foot  of  Parnassus,  to  the  little  haven  of 
Crissa.  There  Apollo  appeared  to  them  once 
more,  this  time  running  down  to  the  beach  to 
meet  them  in  the  form  of 

"  A  stout  and  lusty  fellow, 
His  mighty  shoulders  covered  with  his  mane  ; 
Who  sped  these  words  upon  the  wings  of  sound  : 
•  Strangers,  who  are  ye  ?  and  whence  sail  ye  hither 
The  watery  ways  ?    Come  ye  to  traffic  justly 
Or  recklessly  like  pirates  of  the  deep 
Rove  ye,  adventuring  your  souls,  to  bring 
Evil  on  strangers  ?    Why  thus  sit  ye  grieving, 


34  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

Nor  leap  on  land,  nor  strike  the  mast  and  lay  it 
In  your  black  ship  ?    For  so  should  traders  do 
When,  sated  with  the  labour  of  the  sea, 
They  quit  their  painted  galley  for  the  shore, 
And  presently  the  thought  of  needful  food 
Comes  gladsomely  upon  them.'     So  he  spake, 
Putting  new  courage  in  their  breasts.     To  whom 
The  Cretan  captain  in  his  turn  replied  : 
'  Since  thou  art  nothing  like  to  things  of  earth 
In  form  or  stature,  but  most  like  the  gods 
That  ever  live,  Hail,  and  thrice  hail,  0  Stranger, 
And  may  the  gods  pour  blessings  on  thy  head. 
Now  tell  me  truly,  for  I  need  to  know. 
What  land  is  this,  what  people,  from  what  race 
Descended  ?    As  for  us,  over  the  deep 
Broad  sea,  we  sought  another  haven,  Pylos, 
Sailing  from  Crete,  for  thence  we  boast  to  spring  ; 
But  now  our  ship  is  cast  upon  this  shore. 
For  some  god  steered  our  course  against  our  will.' 
Then  the  far-darter  spoke  and  answered  them. 
*  Friends,  in  well-wooded  Cnossus  hitherto 
Ye  have  had  homes,  but  ye  shall  not  again 
Return  to  your  good  native  town,  to  find 
Each  his  fair  house  and  well-belov6d  wife. 
But  here  shall  ye  possess  my  temple,  rich 
And  greatly  honoured  by  the  tribes  of  men. 
For  I  am  son  to  Zeus.     Apollo  is 
My  sacred  name.     'Twas  I  that  led  you  hither 
Over  the  mighty  bosom  of  the  deep, 
Intending  you  no  ill ;  for  ye  shall  here 
Possess  a  temple  sacred  to  me,  rich. 
And  greatly  honoured  of  all  mortal  men. 
The  counsels  of  the  deathless  gods  shall  be 
Revealed  to  you,  and  by  their  will  your  days 
Shall  pass  in  honour  and  in  peace  for  ever. 
Come  then  and,  as  I  bid,  make  haste  to  do. 
.  .  .     Build  by  the  sea  an  altar  ;  kindle  flame ; 


THE   HOMERIC    HYMNS  85 

Sprinkle  white  barley  grains  thereon,  and  pray, 

Standing  about  the  altar.    And  as  first 

Ye  saw  me  leap  into  your  swift  black  bark 

In  likeness  of  a  dolphin,  so  henceforth 

Worship  me  by  the  name  Delphinius, 

And  Delphian  ever  be  my  far-seen  shrine.'  " 

Thus  the  establishment  of  the  Dorian  god  in 
Phocis  is  explained,  and  the  wealth  and  dignity 
of  his  temple  are  justified  by  prophecy  and  by 
divine  intention.  For  Apollo  is  not  satisfied  with 
repeatedly  describing  the  future  temple,  by  an  in- 
cidental epithet,  as  opulent;  that  hint  would  not 
have  been  enough  for  the  simplicity  of  those  mer- 
chant sailors,  new  as  they  were  to  the  mysteries  of 
priestcraft.  It  was  necessary  for  Apollo  to  allay 
their  fears  of  poverty  by  a  more  explicit  assurance 
that  it  will  be  easy  for  them  to  live  by  the  altar. 
And  what  is  more,  Hermes  and  all  the  thieves  he 
inspires  will  respect  the  shrine ;  its  treasures, 
although  unprotected  by  walls,  shall  be  safe  for- 
ever. 

•  These  were  truly,  as  we  see,  the  hyrQng  pf,  tj^ 
loyitical  ^patriotism.  With  Homeric  breadth  and 
candour  they  dilated  on  the  miracles,  privileges, 
and  immunities  of  the  sacred  places  and  their  ser- 
vitors, and  they  thus  kept  alive  in  successive  gen- 
erations an  awe  mingled  with  familiar  interest 
toward  divine  persons  and  things  which  is  char- 
acteristic of  that  more  primitive  age.     Gods  and 


86  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

men  were  then  nearer  together,  and  both  yielded 
more  frankly  to  the  tendency,  inherent  in  their 
nature,  to  resemble  one  another.      ""      *"*** 

The  same  quality  is  found  in  another  fragment, 
the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  familiar  of  all. 
This  is  the  hymn  to  Demeter  in  which  two  stories 
are  woven  together,  one  telling  of  the  rape  of  Per- 
sephone, and  the  other  of  the  reception  of  Demeter, 
disguised  in  her  sorrow,  into  the  household  of 
Celeus,  where  she  becomes  the  nurse  of  his  infant 
son  Demophoon.  Both  stories  belong  to  the  relig- 
ion of  Eleusis,  where  this  version  of  them  seems 
intended  to  be  sung.  The  place  was  sacred  to 
Demeter  and  Persephone  and  its  mysteries  dealt 
particularly  with  the  passage  of  souls  to  the  nether 
world  and  with  their  habitation  there.  The  pa- 
thetic beauty  of  the  first  fable  —  in  which  we  can 
hardly  abstain  from  seeing  some  symbolical  mean- 
ing—  expresses  for  us  something  of  the  mystic 
exaltation  of  the  local  rites;  while  the  other  tale 
of  Celeus,  his  wife,  his  daughters,  and  his  son, 
whom  his  nurse,  the  disguised  goddess,  almost  sue-* 
ceeds  in  endowing  with  immortality,  celebrates  the 
ancient  divine  affinities  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Eleu- 
sinian  state. 

The  first  story  is  too  familiar  to  need  recount- 
ing; who  has  not  heard  of  the  gentle  Persephone 
gathering  flowers  in  the  meadow  and  suddenly 
swallowed  by  the  yawning  earth  and  carried  away 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  37 

to  Hades,  the  god  of  the  nether  world,  to  share 
his  sombre  but  sublime  dominion  over  the  shades  ? 
—  a  dignity  of  which  she  is  not  insensible,  much 
as  she  grieves  at  the  separation  from  her  beloved 
mother ;  and  how  Demeter  in  turn  is  disconsolate 
and  (in  her  wrath  and  despair  at  the  indiffer- 
ence of  the  gods)  conceals  her  divinity,  refuses 
the  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  wanders  about  in  the 
guise  of  an  old  woman,  nursing  her  grief,  until 
at  last  Zeus  sends  his  messenger  to  Hades  to 
effect  a  compromise ;  and  Persephone,  after  eating 
the  grain  of  pomegranate  that  obliges  her  to  return 
yearly  to  her  husband,  is  allowed  to  come  back  to 
the  upper  world  to  dwell  for  two-thirds  of  the  year 
in  her  mother's  company. 

The  underlying  allegory  is  here  very  interesting. 
We  observe  how  the  genius  of  the  Greek  religion, 
while  too  anthropomorphic  to  retain  any  clear 
consciousness  of  the  cosmic  processes  that  wer^' 
symbolized  by  its  deities  and  their  adventures,  was 
anthropomorphic  also  in  a  moral  way,  and  tended 
to  turn  the  personages  which  it  ceased  to  regard 
as  symbols  of  natural  forces  into  types  of  human 
experience.  So  the  parable  of  the  seed  that  must 
die  if  it  is  to  rise  again  and  live  an  immortal,  if 
interrupted,  life  in  successive  generations,  gives 
way  in  the  tale  of  Demeter  and  Persephone,  to 
a  prototype  of  human  affection.  The  devotee,  no 
longer  reminded  by  his  religion  of  any  cosmic  laws, 


38  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

was  not  reduced  to  a  mere  superstition,  —  to  a 
fable  and  a  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  external  rites, 
—  he  was  encouraged  to  regard  the  mystery  as  the 
divine  counterpart  of  his  own  experience.  His 
religion  in  forgetting  to  be  natural  had  succeeded 
in  becoming  moral;  the_ggds_ were  now  models  of 
human  endurance  and  success ;  their  histories 
offered  sublime  consolations  to  mortal  destiny. 
Fancy  had  turned  the  aspects  of  Nature  into  per- 
sons ;  but  devotion,  directed  upon  these  imaginary 
persons,  turned  them  into  human  ideals  and  into 
patron  saints,  thereby  relating  them  again  to  life 
and  saving  them  from  insignificance. 

A  further  illustration  of  the  latter  transforma- 
tion may  be  found  in  the  second  story  contained  in 
our  hymn.  'Demeter,  weary  of  her  wanderings  and 
sick  at  heart,  has  come  to  sit  down  beside  a  well, 
near  the  house  of  Celeus.  His  four  young  daugh- 
ters, dancing  and  laughing,  come  to  fetch  water  in 
their  golden  jars,  — 

"  As  hinds  or  heifers  gambol  in  the  fields 
When  Spring  is  young." 

They  speak  kindly  to  the  goddess,  who  asks  them 
for  employment.     "  And  for  me,"  she  says,  — 

"And  for  me,  damsels,  harbour  pitiful 
And  favouring  thoughts,  dear  children,  that  I  come 
To  some  good  man's  or  woman's  house,  to  ply 
My  task  in  willing  service  of  such  sort 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  39 

As  ag6d  women  use.     A  tender  child 

I  could  nurse  well  and  safely  In  my  arms, 

And  tend  the  house,  and  spread  the  master's  couch 

Recessed  in  the  fair  chamber,  or  could  teach 

The  maids  their  handicraft." 

The  offer  is  gladly  accepted,  for  Celeus  himself 
has  an  infant  son,  Demophoon,  the  hope  of  his  race. 
The  aged  woman  enters  the  dwelling,  making  in  her 
long-robed  grief  a  wonderful  contrast  to  the  four 
sportive  girls :  — 

"  Who  lifting  up  their  ample  kirtle-folds 
Sped  down  the  waggon-furrowed  way,  and  shook 
Their  curls  about  their  shoulders  —  yellow  gold 
Like  crocuses  in  bloom." 

Once  within  the  house,  which  she  awes  with  her 
uncomprehended  presence,  the  goddess  sits  ab- 
sorbed in  grief,  until  she  is  compelled  to  smile  for 
a  moment  at  the  jests  of  the  quick-witted  maid 
lambe,  and  consents  to  take  in  lieu  of  the  wine  that 
is  offered  her,  a  beverage  of  beaten  barley,  water, 
and  herbs.  These  details  are  of  course  introduced 
to  justify  the  ritual  of  Eleusis,  in  which  the  clown 
and  the  barley-water  played  a  traditional  part. 

Thus  Demeter  becomes  nurse  to  Demophoon,  but 
she  has  ideas  of  her  duties  differing  from  the  com- 
mon, and  worthy  of  her  unusual  qualifications.  She 
neither  suckles  nor  feeds  the  infant  but  anoints  him 
with  ambrosia  and  lays  him  at  night  to  sleep  on  the 
embers  of  the  hearth.     This  his  watchful  mother 


40  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

discovers  with  not  unnatural  alarm ;  when  the  god- 
dess reveals  herself  and  departs,  foiled  in  her  desire 
to  make  her  nursling  immortal. 

The  spirit  that  animates  this  fable  is  not  that 
poetic  frivolity  which  we  are  accustomed  to  asso- 
ciate with  Paganism.  Here  we  find  an  immortal 
in  profoundest  grief  and  mortals  entertaining  an 
angel  unawares ;  we  are  told  of  supernatural  food, 
and  of  a  burning  fire  that  might  make  this  mortal 
put  on  immortality  did  not  the  generous  but  igno- 
rant impulses  of  the  natural  man  break  in  upon  that 
providential  purpose  and  prevent  its  consummation. 
Eleusis  was  the  natural  home  for  such  a  myth,  and 
we  may  well  believe  that  those  initiated  into  the 
mysteries  there  were  taught  to  dwell  on  its  higher 
interpretation. 

But  there  are  other  hymns  in  a  lighter  vein  in 
which  the  play  of  fancy  is  not  guided  by  any  moral 
intuition.  The  hymn  to  Hermes  is  one  perpetual 
ebullition  of  irresponsible  humour. 

Hermes  is  the  child  of  Maia,  a  nymph  of  Cyllene 
whose  cave  Zeus  has  surreptitiously  visited  while 
the  white-armed  Juno  —  for,  unsympathetic  prude 
as  this  goddess  may  be,  she  must  still  be  beautiful 
— slept  soundly  in  Olympus.  The  child  is  hardly 
born  when  he  catches  a  tortoise,  kills  it,  scoops  out 
the  shell,  and  makes  a  lute  of  it,  upon  which  he 
begins  to  play  delicious  music.  Not  satisfied  with 
that  feat,  however,  he  escapes  from  his  cradle,  and 


I 


THE   HOMERIC   HYMNS  41 

drives  from  their  pasture  the  kine  that  Apollo  has 
left  feeding  there.  Accused  afterward  of  this  mis- 
chief, he  defends  himself  after  the  following  fash- 
ion, while  he  lies  in  his  crib,  holding  his  new-made 
lyre  lightly  in  his  hand  under  the  bedclothes.  I 
quote  Shelley's  version :  — 

"  '  An  ox-stealer  should  be  both  tall  and  strong 

And  I  am  but  a  little  new-born  thing 
"Who  yet,  at  least,  can  think  of  nothing  wrong. 

My  business  is  to  suck,  and  sleep,  and  fling 
The  cradle-clothes  about  me  all  day  long. 

Or,  half-asleep,  hear  my  sweet  mother  sing  . 
And  to  be  washed  in  water  clean  and  warm 
And  hushed  and  kissed  and  kept  secure  from  harm.'  '* 

"  Sudden  he  changed  his  plan,  and  with  strange  skill 
Subdued  the  strong  Latonian,  by  the  might 

Of  winning  music,  to  his  mightier  will. 

His  left  hand  held  the  lyre,  and  in  his  right 

The  plectrum  struck  the  chords  :  unconquerable 
Up  from  beneath  his  hand  in  circling  flight 

The  gathering  music  rose  —  and  sweet  as  Love 

The  penetrating  notes  did  live  and  move 

"  "Within  the  heart  of  great  Apollo.     He 

Listened  with  all  his  soul,  and  laughed  for  pleasure. 
Close  to  his  side  stood  harping  fearlessly 

The  unabashed  boy,  and  to  the  measure 
Of  the  sweet  lyre  there  followed  loud  and  free 

His  joyous  voice  :  for  he  unlocked  the  treasure 
Of  his  deep  song,  illustrating  the  birth 
Of  the  bright  Gods,  and  the  dark  desert  Earth  ; 

"  And  how  to  the  Immortals  every  one 
A  portion  was  assigned  of  all  that  is. 


42  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

But  chief  Mnemosyne  did  Maia's  son 
Clotiie  in  the  light  of  his  loud  melodies. 

And,  as  each  god  was  born  or  had  begun, 
He  in  their  order  due  and  fit  degrees 

Sung  of  his  birth  and  being  —  and  did  move 

Apollo  to  unutterable  love." 

In  fact,  after  the  most  enthusiastic  encomiums 
on  the  young  god's  art,  and  on  the  power  of  music 
in  general,  Apollo  offers  the  child  his  protection 
and  friendship :  — 

"Now,  since  thou  hast,  although  so  very  small, 
Science  of  arts  so  glorious,  thus  I  swear,  — 

And  let  this  cornel  javelin,  keen  and  tall, 
Witness  between  us  what  I  promise  here,  — 

That  I  will  lead  thee  to  the  Olympian  hall, 
Honoured  and  mighty,  with  thy  mother  dear, 

And  many  glorious  gifts  in  joy  will  give  thee 

And  even  at  the  end  will  ne'er  deceive  thee." 

Hermes  is  not  insensible  to  this  offer  and  its  ad- 
vantages;  he  accepts  it  with  good  grace  and  many 
compliments,  nor  does  he  wish  to  remain  behind 
in  the  exchange  of  courtesies  and  benefits :  he  ad- 
dresses Apollo  thus :  — 

"  Thou  canst  seek  out  and  compass  all  that  wit 

Can  find  or  teach.     Yet,  since  thou  wilt,  come,  take 

The  lyre  —  be  mine  the  glory  giving  it — 

Strike  the  sweet  chords,  and  sing  aloud,  and  wake 

The  joyous  pleasure  out  of  many  a  fit 
Of  tranced  sound  —  and  with  fleet  fingers  make 

Thy  liquid-voiced  comrade  speak  with  thee,  — 

It  can  talk  measured  music  eloquently. 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  43 

"  Then  bear  it  boldly  to  the  revel  loud, 

Love-wakening  dance,  or  feast  of  solemn  state, 

A  joy  by  night  or  day :  for  those  endowed 
With  art  and  wisdom  who  interrogate 

It  teaches,  babbling  in  delightful  mood 
All  things  which  make  the  spirit  most  elate. 

Soothing  the  mind  with  sweet  familiar  play, 

Chasing  the  heavy  shadows  of  dismay. 

"  To  those  that  are  unskilled  in  its  sweet  tongue, 
Though  they  should  question  most  impetuously 

Its  hidden  soul,  it  gossips  something  wrong  — 
Some  senseless  and  impertinent  reply. 

But  thou,  who  art  as  wise  as  thou  art  strong. 
Canst  compass  all  that  thou  desirest.     I 

Present  thee  with  this  music-flowing  shell, 

Knowing  thou  canst  interrogate  it  well.  ..." 

Apollo  is  not  slow  to  learn  the  new  art  with 
which  he  is  ever  after  to  delight  both  gods  and 
men;  but  he  is  not  at  first  quite  at  ease  in  his 
mind,  fearing  that  Hermes  will  not  only  recapture 
the  lyre  but  steal  his  friend's  bow  and  arrows  into 
the  bargain.  Hermes,  however,  swears  by  all  that 
is  holy  never  to  do  so,  and  the  friendship  of  the 
two  artful  gods  is  sealed  for  ever.  The  minstrel 
does  not  forget,  at  this  point,  to  remind  his  hearers, 
among  whom  we  may  imagine  not  a  few  profes- 
sional followers  of  Hermes  to  have  been  mixed, 
that  the  robber's  honour  is  pledged  by  his  divine 
patron  to  respect  the  treasures  of  Apollo's  shrines. 
Let  not  the  votary  think,  he  adds,  that  Apollo's 
oracles  are  equally  useful  to  good  and  to  bad  men; 


44  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

these  mysteries  are  truly  efficacious  only  for  the 
pious  and  orthodox  who  follow  the  established 
traditions  of  the  temple  and  honour  its  servants. 
Apollo  says :  — 

"  He  who  comes  consigned 
By  voice  and  wings  of  perfect  augury 
To  my  great  shrine  shall  find  avail  in  me  : 

"  Him  I  will  not  deceive,  but  will  assist. 

But  he  who  comes  relying  on  such  birds 
As  chatter  vainly,  who  would  strain  and  twist 

The  purpose  of  the  gods  with  idle  words, 
And  deems  their  knowledge  light,  he  shall  have  missed 

His  road  —  whilst  I  among  my  other  hoards 
His  gifts  deposit.  ..." 

The  wildest  fairy-story  thus  leads  easily  to  a 
little  drama  not  without  its  human  charm  and  moral 
inspiration;  while  the  legend  is  attached  to  the 
cultus,  and  the  cultus  is  intertwined  with  the  prac- 
tice and  sanctions  of  daily  life.  Even  here,  in  its 
most  playful  mood,  therefore,  this  mythological 
poetry  retains  the  spirit  and  function  of  religion. 
Even  here  sacerdotal  interests  are  not  forgotten. 
Delphi  shall  be  safe ;  the  lyre  is  Apollo's  by  right 
although  it  be  Hermes'  by  invention.  A  certain 
amiable  harmony  is  after  all  drawn  from  the  riot 
of  foolishness.  All  is  sweet  and  unmalicious  and 
lovable  enough,  and  the  patronage  of  both  the 
friendly  gods,  the  enthusiast  and  the  wag,  may  be 
invoked  with  confidence  and  benefit. 

Not  less  remarkable,  although  for  other  reasons, 


THE   HOMERIC   HYMNS  46 

is  the  hymn  to  Aphrodite.  Here  we  find  a  more 
human  fable  and  a  more  serious  tone:  while  the 
poem,  if  we  choose  to  consider  it  in  its  allegorical 
meaning,  touches  one  of  the  deepest  convictions 
of  the  Greek  conscience.  All  the  gods  save  three 
—  Athena,  Artemis,  and  Hestia,  —  are  subject  to 
the  power  of  Aphrodite,  Zeus  at  least  as  much 
as  the  rest.  In  revenge  for  this  subjection,  Zeus 
determines  to  make  Aphrodite  feel  the  passion 
which  she  boasts  to  be  able  to  inspire  in  others. 
The  fair  shepherd  Anchises  feeds  his  flocks  upon 
Mount  Ida,  and  with  him  Aphrodite  is  made  to 
fall  in  love.  She  presents  herself  to  him  in  a 
human  disguise,  and  meets  his  advances  with  a 
long  account  of  her  birth  and  parentage,  and  begs 
him  to  take  her  back  to  her  parents,  and  having 
asked  for  her  hand  and  fulfilled  all  customary 
formalities,  to  lead  her  away  as  his  lawful  wife. 
The  passion  which  at  the  same  time,  however,  she 
is  careful  to  breathe  into  him  cannot  brook  so  long 
a  delay :  and  she  yields  to  his  impatience.  When 
about  to  leave  him  she  awakes  him  from  his  sleep, 
turns  upon  him  the  full  glance  of  her  divinity,  and 
reveals  her  name  and  his  destiny.  She  will  bear 
him  a  son,  ^neas,  who  will  be  one  of  the  greatest 
princes  and  heroes  of  Troy;  but  he  himself  will 
be  stricken  with  feebleness  and  a  premature  old 
age,  in  punishment  for  the  involuntary  sacrilege 
which  he  has  committed. 


46  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

The  description  of  the  disguised  goddess,  with 
its  Homeric  pomp  and  elaborate  propriety,  is  a 
noble  and  masterly  one,  underlined,  as  it  were, 
with  a  certain  satirical  or  dramatic  intention;  we 
have  the  directness  of  a  Nausicaa,  with  a  more 
luxurious  and  passionate  beauty.  The  revelation 
of  the  goddess  is  wonderfully  made,  with  that 
parallel  movement  of  natural  causes  and  divine 
workings  which  is  so  often  to  be  admired  in 
Homer.  The  divinity  of  the  visitant  appears  only 
at  the  moment  of  her  flight,  when  she  becomes  a 
consecration  and  an  unattainable  memory.  The 
sight  of  deity  leaves  the  eyes  dull,  like  those  of 
the  Platonic  prisoners  returning  from  the  sunlight 
of  truth  into  the  den  of  appearance.  Nay  more, 
a  communion  with  the  divinity,  closer  than  is 
consonant  with  human  frailty,  leaves  the  seer  im- 
potent and  a  burden  upon  the  world;  but  this 
personal  tragedy  is  not  without  its  noble  fruits  to 
posterity.  Anchises  suffers,  but  his  son  ^neas, 
the  issue  of  that  divine  though  punishable  union, 
lives  to  bear,  not  only  the  aged  Anchises  himself, 
but  the  gods  of  Ilium,  out  of  the  ruins  of  Troy. 

Such  analogies  carry  us,  no  doubt,  far  beyond 
the  intention  of  the  hymn  or  of  the  exoteric  re- 
ligion to  which  it  ministers.  The  story-teller's 
delight  in  his  story  is  the  obvious  motive  of  such 
compositions,  even  when  they  reflect  indirectly 
the   awe   in  which  the   divine   impersonations  of 


THE  HOMERIC   HYMNS  47 

natural  forces  were  held  by  the  popular  religion. 
All  that  we  may  fairly  imagine  to  have  been  in 
the  mind  of  the  pious  singer  is  the  sense  that 
something  divine  comes  down  among  us  in  the 
crises  of  our  existence,  and  that  this  visitation  is 
fraught  with  immense  although  vague  possibilities 
of  both  good  and  evil.  The  gods  sometimes  ap- 
pear, and  when  they  do  they  bring  us  a  foretaste 
of  that  sublime  victory  of  mind  over  matter  which 
we  may  never  gain  in  experience  but  which  may 
constantly  be  gained  in  thought.  When  natural 
phenomena  are  conceived  as  the  manifestation  of 
divine  life,  human  life  itself,  by  sympathy  with 
that  ideal  projection  of  itself,  enlarges  its  custom- 
ary bounds,  until  it  seems  capable  of  becoming  the 
life  of  the  universe.  A  god  is  a  conceived  victory 
of  mind  over  Nature.  A  visible  god  is  the  con- 
sciousness of  such  a  victory  momentarily  attained. 
The  vision  soon  vanishes,  the  sense  of  omnipotence 
is  soon  dispelled  by  recurring  conflicts  with  hostile 
forces ;  but  the  momentary  illusion  of  that  realized 
good  has  left  us  with  the  perenniaj  knowledge  of^ 
good  as  an  ideal.  Therein  lies  the  essence  and  the  • 
function  of  religion.. 

That  such  a  function  was  fulfilled  by  this 
Homeric  legend,  with  all  its  love  of  myth  aijd 
tust  of  visible  beauty,  is  witnessed  by  another  short 
hymn,  which  we  may  quote  almost  entire  by  way 
of  conclusion.     It  is  addressed  to  Castor  and  Poly- 


48  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

deuces,  patrons  of  sailors  no  less  than  of  horsemen 
and  boxers.  It  is  impossible  to  read  it  without 
feeling  that  the  poet,  however  entangled  he  may 
have  been  in  superstition  and  fable,  grasped  that 
high  essence  of  religion  which  makes  religion 
rational.  He  felt  the  power  of  contemplation 
to  master  the  contradictions  of  life  and  to  over- 
spread experience,  sublime  but  impalpable,  like  a 
rainbow  over  retreating  storms :  — 

'  Ye  wild-eyed  Muses,  sing  the  Twins  of  Jove 
.  .  .  Mild  Pollux,  void  of  blame. 
And  steed-subduing  Castor,  heirs  of  fame. 
These  are  the  powers  who  earth-born  mortals  save 
And  ships,  whose  flight  is  swift  along  the  wave. 
When  wintry  tempests  o'er  the  savage  sea 
Are  raging,  and  the  sailors  tremblingly 
Call  on  the  Twins  of  Jove  with  prayer  and  vow, 
Gathered  in  fear  upon  the  lofty  prow. 
And  sacrifice  with  snow-white  lambs  —  the  wind 
And  the  huge  billow  bursting  close  behind 
Even  then  beneath  the  weltering  waters  bear     * 
The  staggering  ship,  —  they  suddenly  appear. 
On  yellow  wings  rushing  athwart  the  sky, 
And  lull  the  blasts  in  mute  tranquillity 
And  strew  the  waves  on  the  white  ocean's  bed, 
'        Fair  omen  of  the  voyage  ;  from  toil  and  dread 
The  sailors  rest,  rejoicing  in  the  sight, 
And  plough  the  quiet  sea  in  safe  delight."  ^ 

1  Shelley's  translation. 


Ill 

THE  DISSOLUTION   OF  PAGANISM 

Greek  religion  seems  to  have  contained  three 
factors  of  unequal  prominence,  but  ultimately  of 
about  equal  importance  and  longevity.  Most  obvi- 
ous, especially  if  we  begin  our  study  with  Homer, 
is  the  mythology  which  presents  us  with  a  multi- 
tude of  gods,  male  and  female,  often  related  by 
blood,  and  having  social  and  even  hostile  relations 

with  one  another. If_^e  examine  their  characters, 

attributes,  and  fables,  we  readily  perceive  that  most 
of'  them  are  impersonations  of  natural  forces. 
Some,  however,  figure  prominently  as  patrons  of 
special  arts  or  special  places,  as  Apollo  of  prophecy 
and  music,  of  Delos  and  Delphi;  and  yet  others 
seem  to  be  wholly  personifications  of  human  powers, 
as  Athena  of  prudence  and  of  martial  and  indus- 
trial arts. 

Underlying  this  mythology  is  another  element, 
probably  more  ancient,  the  worship  of  ancestors, 
local  divinities,  and  domestic  gods.  With  these 
were  naturally  connected  various  ritual  observ- 
ances, and  especially  the  noblest  and  most  impor- 
£  49 


50  POETRY  AND   KELIGIOK 

tant  of  rites,  the  sacrifice.  Such  practices  may  be 
supposed  to  have  belonged  originally  to  the  tribal 
religion,  and  to  have  passed  by  analogy  to  the  great 
natural  gods,  when  these  had  been  once  created  by 
the  poet  and  perhaps  identified  with  the  older 
genius  of  that  spot  where  their  efficacy  was  first 
signally  manifested. 

Finally,  as  a  third  element,  we  find  the  religion 
of  the  priests,  soothsayers,  and  magicians,  as  well  as 
the  rites  of  Orpheus,  Bacchus,  and  the  Great 
Goddesses  at  Eleusis.  These  forms  of  worship 
showed  Oriental  affinities  and  partook  of  a  kiiid  of 
nocturnal  horror  and  mystical  enthusiasm.  They 
were  the  Greek  representatives  of  the  religion  of 
revelation  and  of  sacraments,  and  bore  much  the 
same  relation  to  the  supernaturalistic  elements  in 
Christianity  as  does  the  idea  of  a  shade  in  Hades 
to  the  idea  of  a  soul  in  heaven.  The  fundamental 
intuitions  were  the  same,  but  in  Pagan  times  they 
remained  vague,  doubtful,  and  incoherent. 

These  three  forms  of  religion  lay  together  in 
men's  minds  and  habits  throughout  the  formative 
period  of  Greek  literature.  There  was  an  occa- 
sional rivalry  among  them,  but  the  tolerance  char- 
acteristic of  Paganism  could  reconcile  their  claims 
without  much  difficulty,  and  admit  them  all  to 
a  share  of  honour.  The  history  of  the  three 
elements,  however,  differs  essentially,  as  might  be 
expected  after  a  consideration  of  their  respective 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF  PAGANISM  51 

natures.  The  antique  family  religion  lived  by 
inertia;  it  was  obeyed  without  being  justified 
theoretically,  and  remained  strong  by  its  very 
obscurity.  Many  customs  which  a  man  may  have 
occasion  to  conform  to  only  once  or  twice  in  his 
life  endure  for  ages  and  survive  the  ebb  and  flow 
of  intellectual  and  political  systems.  Nursery  tales, 
trivial  superstitions,  customs  connected  with  wed- 
dings or  funerals,  or  with  certain  days  of  the  year, 
have  a  strange  and  irrational  persistence ;  they 
surprise  us  by  emerging  into  prominence  after 
centuries  of  a  sort  of  subterraneous  existence. 
Thus  the  deification  of  Roman  emperors  was  not 
the  sacrilegious  innovation  which  it  might  appear 
to  be,  but  on  the  contrary  a  restoration  of  the  spirit 
of  the  most  ancient  faith,  a  revival  called  to  the 
aid  of  a  new  polity  by  the  mingled  statecraft  and 
superstition  of  the  times.  Thus,  too,  the  Christian 
care  in  the  burial  of  the  dead  (contrary  as  it  is  to 
the  theoretical  spiritualism  of  Christianity),  the 
feast  of  All  Souls,  and  the  prayers  for  the  departed 
are  evidences  of  the  same  latent  human  religion 
underlying  the  cosmic  flights  and  public  contro- 
versies of  theology. 

The  mysteries,  on  the  other  hand,  had  essentially 
a  spirit  of  self-consciousness  and  propaganda.  They 
came  as  revelations  or  as  reforms ;  they  pretended 
to  disclose  secrets  handed  down  from  remote 
antiquity,  from  the  primeval  revelation  of  God  to 


52  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

man,  or  truths  recovered  by  the  inspiration  of 
later  prophets  supernaturally  illumined.  The 
history  of  these  movements  is,  accordingly,  the 
history  of  sects.  They  never  constituted  the  nor- 
mal and  common  religion  of  the  people,  and  never 
impressed  their  spirit  on  the  national  literature, 
-^schylus  or  Plato  may  have  borrowed  something 
from  them ;  but  they  did  so  most  when  they 
assumed  an  attitude  of  open  opposition  to  the 
exoteric  religion  of  their  country.  Thus  when 
Plato  makes  his  Socrates  propound  a  Pythagorean 
or  Orphic  doctrine  of  transmigration,  he  represents 
the  very  members  of  the  Socratic  circle  as  surprised, 
or  as  incredulous;  and  when  they  are  finally 
silenced  by  the  proofs  advanced,  it  is  only  because 
they  are  overawed  by  the  dogmatic  unction  of  a 
dying  sage,  who  stimulates  their  imagination  with 
poetic  myths,  and  confuses  their  intellect  with 
verbal  equivocations.  When  the  mist  of  the  argu- 
ment has  cleared  away,  like  incense  after  the 
sacrifice,  there  remains  indeed  a  profound  emotion, 
a  catharsis  produced  by  the  sublimity  and  pathos, 
so  artfully  mingled,  of  both  scene  and  argument ; 
but  the  bare  doctrine  enunciated,  true  and  profound 
as  it  is  in  its  deeper  meaning,  is  quite  incapable  of 
appealing  to  an  undisciplined  mind,  and  could  not 
pass  for  a  religious  dogma  except  for  the  priestly 
robes  in  which  it  is  dressed.  Thus  the  function  of 
the   mysteries   of  which  Plato's   Phaedo   may   be 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF  PAGANISM  53 

regarded  as  a  philosophic  echo,  was  to  be  the 
vehicle  of  revolutionary  tendencies,  tendencies 
which  a  philosopher  might  privately  shape  in  one 
way  and  a  superstitious  man  in  another.  Both 
could  find  in  the  spell  of  an  occult  ceremonial  and 
in  the  prophecies  of  an  oracular  creed  an  escape 
from  the  limitations  of  the  official  religion.  Mysti- 
cism and  the  claim  to  illumination  found  in  these 
mysteries  their  natural  expression.  The  many 
fundamental  questions  left  unanswered  and  unasked 
by  Paganism,  the  many  potentialities  of  religious 
emotion  left  unexercised  by  it,  were  thus  allowed 
to  appear. 

Independently  of  these  two  comparatively  silent 
streams  of  religious  life,  we  may  trace  the  current  of 
polytheistic  theology,  —  a  current  which  naturally 
left  a  plainer  trace  in  literature,  since  it  contained 
all  there  might  be  in  Greece  of  speculation  and 
controversy  in  religious  matters.  The  moral  sanc- 
tions of  religion  were  embodied  in  the  domestic 
and  civic  worship ;  the  pious  imagination  remained 
thereby  all  the  freer  to  follow  the  analogies  of 
physical  objects  in  its  mythology.  Apollo  was  the 
father  of  Asclepius  and  the  leader  of  the  Muses; 
his  ideal  dignity  and  beneficence  were  vouched  for 
by  those  attributes.  He  could  well  afford,  there- 
fore, as  the  Sun-god,  to  decimate  the  Greek  army 
with  the  same  fatal  shafts  with  which  he  slew  the 
Python.     The  moral  function  of  the  god  was  cer- 


54  POETRY  AND   KELIGION 

tain  on  other  grounds,  being  enshrined  in  the  local 
religions  of  the  people.  The  poet  might  follow 
without  scruple  the  suggestions  of  experience ;  he 
might  attribute  to  the  god  the  various  activities, 
beneficent  and  maleficent,  observable  in  the  ele- 
ment over  which  he  presided.  This  is  a  liberty- 
taken  even  in  the  most  moralistic  religions.  (^  In  the 
Gospels,  for  instance,  we  sometimes  find  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  illustrated  by  principles  drawn  from 
observation  of  this  world  rather  than  from  an  ideal 
conception  of  justice-,  as  when  we  hear  that  to  him 
that  hath  shall  be  given  and  from  him  that  hath 
not  shall  be  taken  away  even  that  which  he  hath. 
Such  characterizations  appeal  to  our  sense  of  fact. 
They  remind  us  that  the  God  we  are  seeking  is 
present  and  active,  that  he  is  the  living  God;  they 
are  doubtless  necessary  if  we  are  to  keep  religion 
from  passing  into  a  mere  idealism  and  God  into 
the  vanishing  point  of  our  thought  and  endeavour. 
For  we  naturally  seek  to  express  his  awful  actu- 
ality, his  unchallengeable  power,  no  less  than  his 
holiness  and  beauty.  This  sense  of  the  real  exist- 
ence of  religious  objects  can  only  be  maintained  by 
identifying  them  with  objects  of  actual  experience, 
with  the  forces  of  Nature,  or  the  passions  or  con- 
science of  man,  or  (if  it  must  come  to  that)  with 
written  laws  or  visible  images. 

An  instinctive  recognition  of  this  necessity  kept 
Greek  mythology  ever  ready  to  return  to  Nature  to 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  55 

gather  its  materials  afresh  from  a  docile,  if  poetical, 
observation  of  reality.  The  character  of  the  god 
must  be  studied  in  the  manifestations  of  his  chosen-* 
element ;  otherwise  men  might  forget  that,  althoughy 
the  form  of  the  god  was  poetical,  his  essence  wasV 
a  positive  reality  of  the  most  practical  kind.  Zeus 
must  still  toss  his  ambrosial  locks  with  a  certain 
irritation,  in  order  that  we  may  recognize  him  in 
the  rumblings  of  the  sky ;  he  must  still  be  capable 
of  wrath  and  deliberate  malice,  that  his  awful  hand 
may  be  thought  to  have  hurled  the  thunderbolt. 
Cronos  must  not  be  forbidden  to  devour  his  chil- 
dren, else  we  should  no  longer  reverence  in  him  the 
inexorable  might  of  time.  Mythology  was  quite, 
right  in  not  shrinking  from  such  poetic  audaci- 
ties. They  were  its  chief  title  to  legitimacy,  the 
proof,  amid  the  embroideries  of  fancy  which  over- 
lay the  divine  idea,  that  the  god  was  not  an  inven- 
tion, but  a  fact.  He  had  been  found,  he  was  known. 
His  character,  like  all  character,  was  merely  a  prin- 
ciple which  reflection  discovered  in  his  observed 
conduct.  The  reality,  then,  of  the  mythological 
gods  was  initially  unquestionable ;  and  the  more 
faithful  the  study  of  Nature  by  which  the  poet  was 
inspired,  the  more  authority  did  his  prophetic  vision 
retain. 

But  the  intense  imaginative  vitality  that  must 
have  preceded  Homer  and  Hesiod,  the  prodigious 
gift  of  sympathetic  observation  to  which  we  owe 


56  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

Zeus  and  Pan  and  all  their  endless  retinue,  was  too 
glorious  to  last.  No  later  interpreter  could  find  so 
much  meaning  in  his  text.  Mythology  was  accord- 
ingly placed  in  a  sad  dilemma,  with  either  horn 
fataFto'rEs  life  ;  it  must  either  be  impoverished  to 
remain  sincere,  or  become  artificial  to  remain  ade- 
quate. The  history  of  Greek  religion,  on  its  specu- 
lative side,  is  nothing  but  the  story  of  this  double 
decadence.  Reflection  upon  the  process  of  Nature  ^ 
and  desire  for  philosophic  truth  led  inevitably  to 
a  blank  pantheism  and  to  the  reduction  of  positive 
traditions  to  moral  allegories.  This  was  the  direc- 
tion taken  by  the  Stoic  theology.  On  the  other 
hand,  adherence  to  the  traditional  gods,  with  no 
further  vivifying  reference  to  their  natural  func- 
tions in  the  world,  could  lead  only  to  arbitrary 
fictions,  which,  having  no  foothold  or  justification 
in  reality,  were  incapable  of  withstanding  the  first 
sceptical  attack.  What  an  age  of  imagination  had 
intuited  as  truth,  an  age  of  reflection  could  preserve 
only  as  fable ;  and  as  fable,  accordingly,  the  religion 
of  the  ancients  survived  throughout  the  Christian 
ages.  It  remains  still  the  mother-tongue  of  the 
imagination  and,  in  spite  of  all  revolutions  and 
admixtures,  is  the  classic  language  of  art  and 
poetry,  which  no  other  means  of  expression  has 
superseded. 

Beginning,  however,  with  that  zealous  Protestant, 
the  old  Xenophanes,  the  austerer  minds,  moralists. 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF  PAGANISM  57 

naturalists,  and  wits,  united  in  decrying  the  fanci- 
ful polytheism  of  the  poets.  This  criticism  was  in 
one  sense  unjust;  it  did  not. . considei^tlie.jDriginal 
J  justification  of  mythology  in  human  nature  and  in 
the  external  facts.  It  was,  like  all  heresy  or  partial 
scepticism,  in  a  sense  superficial  and  unphilosophi- 
cal.  It  was  far  from  conceiving  that  its  own  tenets 
and  assumptions  were  as  groundless,  without  being 
as  natural  or  adequate,  as  the  system  it  attacked. 
To  a  person  sufficiently  removed  by  time  or  by 
philosophy  from  the  controversies  of  sects,  ortho- 
doxy must  always  appear  right  and  heresy  wrong ; 
for  he  sees  in  orthodoxy  the  product  of  the  creative 
mind,  of  faith  and  constructive  logic,  but  in  heresy 
only  the  rebellion  of  some  partial  interest  or  partial 
insight  against  the  corollaries  of  a  formative  prin- 
ciple imperfectly  grasped  and  obeyed  with  hesita- 
tion. At  a  distance,  the  criticism  that  disintegrates 
any  great  product  of  art  or  mind  must  always  appear 
short-sighted  and  unamiable.  Socrates,  invoking 
the  local  deities  of  brooks  and  meadows,  or  paying 
the  debt  of  a  cock  to  Asclepius  (in  thanksgiving, 
it  is  said,  for  a  happy  death),  is  more  reasonable 
and  noble  to  our  mind  than  are  the  hard  denials  of 
Xenophanes  or  Theodorus.  But  in  their  day  the 
revolt  of  the  sceptics  had  its  relative  justification. 
The  imagination  had  dried  up,  and  what  had  once 
been  a  natural  interpretation  of  facts  now  seemed  an 
artificial  addition  to  them.     An  elaborate  and  irrel- 


58  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

evant  world  of  fiction  seemed  to  have  been  im- 
posed on  human  credulity.  Mythology  was,  in 
fact,  already  largely  irrelevant;  the  experience 
poetized  by  it  had  been  forgotten  and  the  symbol, 
in  its  insignificance,  could  not  be  honestly  or  use- 
fully retained. 

The  Greek  philosophers,  as  a  rule,  proceeded 
cautiously  in  these  matters.  They  passed  myth- 
ology by  with  a  conventional  reverence  and  looked 
elsewhere  for  the  true  object  of  their  personal 
religion.  But  the  old  mythological  impulse  was 
not  yet  spent;  it  showed  itself  still  active  in  all 
the  early  philosophers  who  gave  the  godhead  new 
incarnations  congruous  with  the  character  of  their 
respective  physical  systems.  (^  To  the  Socratic 
School  the  natural  world  was  no  longer  the  sphere 
in  which  divinity  was  to  be  found.  They  looked 
for  the  divine  rather  in  moral  and  intelligible 
ideas  J  But  not  only  did  they  carry  the  mytho- 
logical instinct  with  them  into  that  new  field,  they 
also  retained  it  in  the  field  of  Nature,  whenever 
they  still  regarded  Nature  as  real.  Thus  Aristotle, 
while  he  rejected  the  anthropomorphism  of  the 
popular  faith,  attributing  it  to  political  exigencies, 
turned  the  forty-nine  spheres,  of  which  he  con- 
jectured that  the  heaven  might  be  composed,  into 
a  pantheon  of  forty-nine  divinities.  Every  pri- 
mary movement,  he  argued,  must  be  the  expression 
of  an  eternal  essence  by  which  the  movement  is 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  PAGANISM  59 

justified,  as  the  movement  of  the  mind  in  thinking 
or  loving  is  justified  by  the  truth  or  excellence  of 
the  object  of  thought  or  of  love.  Without  such  a 
worthy  object,  these  spiritual  activities  would  be 
irrational;  and  no  less  irrational  would  be  the 
motion  of  the  spheres,  were  each  not  obedient  to 
the  influence  of  some  sacred  and  immutable  prin- 
ciple. Forty-nine  gods  accordingly  exist;  but  no 
more.  For,  since  the  essence  of  each  is  to  be  the 
governing  ideal  of  a  motion,  the  number  of  motions 
in  the  sky  determines  the  number  of  divine  first 
principles.  The  gods,  we  see,  are  still  the  souls 
of  Nature;  a  soul  without  a  body  would  be  a 
principle  without  an  application ;  there  can  be 
no  gods,  then,  without  a  phenomenal  function, 
no  gods  that  do  not  appear  in  the  operations  of 
Nature.  This  astronomic  mythology  was  surely 
not  less  poetical  than  that  of  Homer,  even  if,  by 
virtue  of  a  certain  cold  and  abstract  purity,  not 
unworthy  of  the  stars  of  which  it  spoke,  it  was 
more  difficult  and  sublime.  We  may  observe  in 
it  a  last  application  of  the  ancient  mythological 
•method  by  which  the  phenomena  of  Nature  became 
evidence  of  the  existence  and  character  of  the 
gods. 

But  the  celestial  deities  of  Aristotle,  and  the 
minor  creative  gods  of  Plato  that  correspond  to 
them,  retained  too  much  poetic  individuality  for  the 
still  poorer  imagination  of  later  tinles.     The  most 


60  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

religious  of  sects  during  the  classical  decadence  was 
that  of  the  Stoics  ;  in  them  the  spirit  of  conformity, 
which  is  a  chief  part  even  of  the  religions  of  hope, 
constituted  by  its  exclusive  cultivation  a  religion 
of  despair.  The  name  of  Zeus,  and  an  equally 
equivocal  use  of  the  word  "reason"  to  designate 
the  regularity  of  Nature,  served  to  disguise  the 
alien  brutality  of  the  power  or  law  to  which  all 
the  gods  had  been  reduced.  Against  the  back- 
ground of  a  materialistic  pantheism,  in  which  Stoic 
speculation  culminated,  two  positive  interests  stood 
out:  one,  the  resolute  and  truly  human  courage 
with  which  the  Stoic  faced  the  reality  as  he  con- 
ceived it,  and  kept  his  dignity  and  his  conscience 
pure  although  heaven  might  fall ;  the  other,  the 
efforts  he  made,  in  his  need  for  religion,  to  re- 
juvenate and  reinterpret  the  pagan  forms.  The 
fables  he  turned  into  ethical  allegories,  the  oracles, 
auspices,  and  other  superstitious  rites,  he  trans- 
formed into  quasi-scientific  ways  of  reading  the 
book  of  Nature  and  forecasting  events. 

This  possibility  of  prophecy  constituted  the  Stcfic 
''  providence  "  which  the  sentimentality  of  modernj* 
apologists  has  been  glad  to  confuse  with  the  benevo- 
lent Providence  of  Christian  dogma,  a  Providence 
making  for  the  salvation  of  men.  GQie  Stoie_prQYi- 
dence  excluded  that  essential  element  of  benevo- 
lence; it  was  merely  the  fact  that  Nature  was 
prophetic  of  her  own  future,  that  her  parts,  both 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  61 

in  space  and  in  time,  were  magically  composed  into 
one  living  system.  Mythology  thus  ended  with 
the  conception  of  a  single  god  whose  body  was  the 
whole  physical  universe,  whose  fable  was  all  his- 
tory, and  whose  character  was  the  principle  of  the 
universal  natural  order.  No  attempt  was  made  by 
the  ancient  Stoics  to  make  this  divinity  better  or 
more  amiable  than  the  evidence  of  experience 
showed  it  to  be ;  the  self-centred,  self-sufficient 
Stoic  morality,  the  recourse  to  suicide,  and  the 
equality  in  happiness  and  dignity  between  the  wise 
man  and  Zeus,  all  prove  quite  conclusively  that 
nothing  more  was  asked  or  expected  of  Nature 
than  what  she  chose  to  give ;  to  be  virtuous  was  in 
man's  power,  and  nothing  else  was  a  good  to  man. 
The  universe  could  neither  benefit  nor  injure  him  ; 
and  thus  we  see  that,  despite  a  reverential  tone  and 
an  occasional  reminiscence  of  the  thunderbolts  of 
Zeus,  the  Stoic's  conscience  knew  how  to  scorn  the 
moral  nothingness  of  that  blank  deity  to  which  his 
metaphysics  had  reduced  the  genial  company  of  the 
gods. 

Thus  the  reality  which  the  naturalistic  gods  had 
borrowed  from  the  elements  proved  to  be  a  danger- 
ous prerogative ;  being  real  and  manifest,  these  gods 
had  to  be  conceived  according  to  "our  experience  of 
tjieir  operation,  so  that  with  every  advance  in  sci- 
entific observation  theology  had  to  be  revised,  and 
something  had  to  be  subtracted  from  the  person- 


62  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

ality  and  benevolence  of  the  gods.  The  moral 
character  originally  attributed  to  them  necessarily 
receded  before  the  clearer  definition  of  natural 
forces  and  the  accumulated  experience  of  national 
disasters.  Finally,  little  remained  of  the  gods 
except  their  names,  reduced  to  rhetorical  synonyms 
for  the  various  departments  of  Nature;  Phoebus 
was  nothing  but  a  bombastic  way  of  saying  the 
sun ;  Hephaestus  became  nothing  but  fire,  Eros  or 
Aphrodite  nothing  but  love,  Zeus  nothing  but  the 
general  force  and  law  of  Nature.  Thus  the  gods 
remained  real,  but  were  no  longer  gods.  If  belief 
in  their  reality  was  to  be  kept  up,  they  could  not 
retain  too  many  attributes  that  had  no  empirical 
manifestation.  They  must  be  reduced,  as  it  were, 
to  their  fighting  weight.  All  that  the  imagination 
had  added  to  them  by  way  of  personal  character, 
sanctity,  and  life  must  be  rejected  as  anthropomor- 
phism and  fable. 

Such  is  the  necessary  logic  of  natural  religion. 
If  Nature  manifests  the  existence  of  a  god,  she 
must  to  that  extent  manifest  his  character ;  if  she 
does  not  manifest  his  character,  she  cannot  involve 
his  existence.  We  observe  to-day  a  process  exactly 
analogous  to  that  by  which  the  natural  divinities 
of  Greece  were  reduced  again  to  the  physical  or 
social  forces  from  which  poetry  had  originally 
evoked  their  forms.  Many  minds  are  grown  too 
timid  to  build  their  religious  faith  unblushingly  on 


THE   DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  63 

revelation,  or  on  that  moral  imagination  or  inward 
demand  which  revelation  comes  to  express  and  to 
satisfy^  They  seek,  therefore,  to  naturalize  the 
Deity  and  to  identify  it  with  some  principle  of 
history,  of  Nature,  or  of  logic.  But  this  identifica- 
tion cannot  be  made  without  great  concessions  on 
both  sides.  The  accommodations  which  ensue  in- 
evitably involve  many  equivocations,  and  some 
misrepresentations  of  the  heterogeneous  principles, 
now  natural,  now  moral,  which  it  is  sought  to 
unify.  Confused  and  agonized  by  these  contra- 
dictions, the  natural  theologian,  if  he  keep  his 
honesty,  can  only  rest  in  the  end  in  a  chastened 
recognition  of  the  facts  of  experience,  toward 
which  he  will,  no  doubt,  exercise  his  acquired 
habits  of  acquiescence  and  euphemism.  But  these 
habits,  the  survival  of  which  gives  his  philosophy 
some  air  of  being  still  a  religion,  will  not  be  in- 
herited by  his  disciples  and  successors;  a  pious 
manner  may  survive  religious  faith,  but  will  not 
survive  it  long.  The  society  to  whom  the  reformer 
teaches  a  reticent  and  embarrassed  naturalism  will 
discard  the  reticence  and  avow  the  naturalism 
with  pride.  The  masses  of  men  will  see  no  reason 
why  they  should  not  live  out  their  native  impulses 
or  acquired  passions  without  fear  of  that  environ- 
ing power  of  which  they  are,  after  all,  the  highest 
embodiment;  while  a  few  thinkers,  devout  and 
rational  by  temperament,  will  know  how  to  main- 


64  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

tain  their  dignity  of  spirit  in  the  face  of  a  universe 
of  which  they  ask  no  favour  save  the  revelation  of 
its  laws.  (T^^  irreligion  for  the  many  and  Stoicism 
for  the  few  is  the  end  of  natural  religion  in  the 
modern  world  as  it  was  in  the  ancient. 
\r  But  natural  religion  (that  is,  the  turning  of  the 
j  facts  and  laws  of  Nature  or  of  experience  into  an 
L  object  of  worship)  is  by  no  means  a  primitive  nor  an 
^  ultimate  form  of  religion;  it  is  rather  of  all  the 
forms  of  religion  the  most  unnatural  and  the  least 
capable  of  existing  without  a  historical  and  emo- 
tional setting,  independent  of  its  own  essence  and 
inconsistent  with  its  principle.  £q.  nation  has  ever 
had  a  merely  natural  religion.  What  is  called  by 
that  name  has  been  the  appanage  of  a  few  philoso- 
phers in  ages  of  religious  disintegration,  when  the 
habit  of  worship,  surviving  the  belief  in  any  proper 
object  of  worship,  has  been  transferred  with  effort 
and  uncertainty  to  the  natural  order  which  alone 
remained  before  the  mind,  —  to  the  cosmos,  the 
self,  the  state,  or  humanity.  Mythology,  of  which 
natural  religion  is  the  last  and  most  abstract  phase, 
was  originally  religious  only  in  so  far  as  it  was 
l!!supernatural ;  in  so  far,- 1  mean,  as  the  analogies  of 
outer  Nature  led  the  poet  to  conceive  some  moral 
ideal,  some  glorious  being  full  of  youth  and  serenity, 
of  passion  and  wisdoniTj  Only  when  thus  trans- 
figured into  the  human  could  the  natural  seem 
diviner]  The  Greeks  were  never  idolaters,  and  no 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF  PAGANISM  65 

more  worshipped  the  sun  or  moon  or  the  whole  of 
Nature  than  they  did  statues  of  bronze  or  marble ; 
they  worshipped  only  the  god  who  had  a  temporal 
image  in  the  temple  as  he  had  an  eternal  image  in 
the  sun  or  in  the  universe. 

It  happened,  therefore,  that  in  the  decay  of 
mythology  the  gods  could  still  survive  as  moral 
ideals.  The  more  they  were  cut  off  from  their 
accidental  foothold  in  the  world  of  fact,  the  more 
clearly  could  they  manifest  their  essence  as  expres- 
sions of  the  world  of  values.  We  have  mentioned 
the  fact  that  the  greater  gods  of  Greece  were  almost 
wholly  detached  from  the  cosmographical  hints 
which  had  originally  suggested  their  character  and 
fable.  Thus  emancipated,  these  nobler  gods  could 
survive  in  the  consciousness  of  the  devout,  fixed 
there  by  their  purely  moral  significance  and  poetic 
truth.  Apollo  or  Athena  showed  little  or  nothing 
of  a  naturalistic  origin ;  they  were  patrons  of  life, 
embodiments  of  the  ideal,  objects  of  contemplation 
for  souls  that  by  prayer  would  rise  to  the  sem- 
blance of  the  god  to  whom  they  prayed.  This 
transformation  into  the  moral  had  been  going  on 
from  the  beginning  in  the  religious  mind  of  Greece. 
It  was  really  the  legitimate  fulfilment  of  that 
translation  into  the  human  to  which  mythology 
itself  was  due.  JBut  mythj^logyJiaiL-merelv  turned 
the  physical  into  the  personal  and  impassioned; 
religion  was   now  to  turn  the  psychical  into  the 


66  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

good.  This  tendency  came  to  a  vivid  and  rational 
expression  in  Plato.  The  gods,  he  declared,  should 
De  represented  only  as  they  were,  i.e.  as  moral 
ideals.  The  scandal  of  their  fables  should  be 
removed  and  they  should  be  regarded  as  authors 
only  of  the  good,  in  their  own  lives  as  in  ours.  To 
refer  all  things  to  the  efficacy  of  the  gods  should 
be  accounted  impiety.  They,  like  the  supreme  and 
abstract  principle  of  all  excellence  which  they  em- 
bodied, could  be  the  authors  only  of  what  is  good. 

Had  this  remarkable  doctrine  been  carried  out 
fully  it  would  have  led  to  important  results.  We 
should  have  had  goodness  as  the  criterion  of  divin- 
ity, to  the  exclusion  of  power.  God  would  have 
become  avowedly  an  ideal,  a  pattern  to  which  the 
world  might  or  might  not  conform.  Such  potential 
conformity  would  have  remained  dependent  on 
causes,  natural  or  free,  with  which  God,  not  being 
a  power,  could  have  nothing  to  do.  Plato  and 
Aristotle  did,  in  fact,  construct  a  theology  on  these 
lines,  but  they  obscured  its  purity  in  their  well- 
meant  attempts  to  connect  (more  or  less  mythically 
or  magically)  their  own  Socratic  principle  of  ex- 
cellence with  the  cosmic  principles  of  the  earlier 
philosophers.  The  elements  of  confusion  and  pan- 
theism which  were  thus  introduced  into  the  Socratic 
philosophy  made  it  more  acceptable,  perhaps,  to 
the  theologians  of  later  times,  in  whose  religion  a 
pantheistic  tendency  was  also  latent.    In  the  hands 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  67 

of  Jewish,  Christian,  or  Mohammedan  commenta- 
tors the  mythical  and  magical  part  of  the  Greek 
conceptions  was  naturally  emphasized  and  the 
rational  part  reinterpreted  and  obscured.  Plato 
had  spoken,  in  one  of  his  myths,  of  a  Demiurgos, 
a  personification  of  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  who 
directly  or  indirectly  made  the  world  in  his  own 
image,  rendering  it  as  perfect  as  the  indeterminate 
Chaos  he  worked  on  would  allow.  Aristotle  had 
spoken  of  an  intelligence,  happy  and  self-contem- 
plative, who  was  the  principle  of  movement  in  the 
heavens,  and  through  the  heavens  in  the  rest  of 
Nature.  Such  expressions  had  a  sound  far  too 
congruous  with  Mosaic  doctrine  not  to  be  seized 
upon  with  joy  by  the  apologists  of  the  new  faiths, 
who  were  glad  to  invoke  the  authority  of  classic 
poets  and  philosophers  in  favour  of  doctrines  that 
in  their  Hebrew  expression  might  so  easily  seem 
crude  and  irrational  to  the  Gentiles.  This  assimila- 
tion gave  to  the  casual  myths  of  Plato  and  to  the 
meagre  though  bold  argumentation  of  Aristotle  a 
turn  and  a  significance  which  they  hardly  had  to 
their  authors.  If  we  approach  these  philosophers 
as  we  should  from  the  point  of  view  of  Greek 
literature  and  life,  and  prepare  ourselves  to  see  in 
them  the  disciples  of  Socrates  rather  than  (what 
Plato  was  once  actually  declared  to  be)  the  dis- 
ciples of  Moses,  we  shall  see  that  they  were  simply 
mythologists  of  the  Ideal;   they  refined   the  gods 


68  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

of  tradition  into  patrons  of  civic  discipline  and 
art,  the  gods  of  natural  philosophy  into  principles 
of  intelligibility  and  beauty. 

The  creation  described  in  the  Timaeus  is  a  trans- 
parent parable.  Elements  which  ethical  reflection 
distinguishes  in  the  field  of  experience  are  turned 
in  that  dialogue,  with  undisguised  freedom  of 
fancy,  into  so  many  half-personified  primitive 
powers ;  the  Ideas,  the  Demiurgos,  Chaos,  the  In- 
determinate, and  the  "gods  of  gods."  Plato  has 
not  forgotten  the  lessons  of  Socrates  and  Parmen- 
ides.  He  distrusts  as  much  as  they  any  natural 
or  genetic  philosophy  of  existence.  He  virtually 
tells  us  that,  if  we  must  have  a  history  of  creation, 
we  can  hardly  do  better  than  to  take  ideal  or 
moral  principles,  combine  them  as  we  might  so 
many  material  elements,  and  see  how  the  intelligi- 
ble part  of  existence  may  thus  receive  a  quasi- 
explanation.  God  remains  the  creator  of  the  good 
only,  because  what  he  is  mythically  said  to  create 
is  merely  that  in  Nature  which  spontaneously  re- 
sembles him  or  conforms  to  his  idea ;  only  this 
element  in  Nature  is  intelligible  or  good,  and 
therefore  the  principle  of  goodness  may  be  said 
to  be  its  cause.  Thus,  for  example,  if  we  chose 
to  write  an  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  we  might 
•  attribute  to  the  Demon  of  Spleen  or  to  the  Blue 
Devils  only  the  sombre  elements  of  that  soulful 
compound,  which,  however,   the   evil   imps  would 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF  PAGANISM  69 

eternally  tend  to  make  as  absolutely  dyspeptic 
and  like  unto  themselves  as  its  primordial  texture 
would  allow.  In  exactly  such  a  way  Plato^  in  his 
allegorical  manner,  constructed  a  universe  with  a 
poetical  machinery  of  moral  forces,  personified  and 
treated  as  agents.  When  the  thin  veil  of  allegory 
is  drawn  aside,  there  remains  nothing  but  a  splen- 
did illustration  of  the  Socratic  philosophy ;  we  are 
taught  that  the  only  science  is  moral  science,  and 
that,  if  we  wish  to  understand  the  world,  we  must 
bend  our  minds  to  the  definition  of  its  qualities 
and  values,  which  are  all  that  is  intelligible  in  it. 
Essences  and  values  alone  are  knowable  and  fixed 
and  amenable  to  science.  If  we  insist  on  history 
and  cosmogony,  we  must  be  satisfied  with  hav- 
ing them  presented  to  us  in  allegorical  form,  and 
made  to  follow  ethics  as  the  Timaeus  follows  the 
Kepublic.  Natural  philosophy  can  be  nothing 
but  a  sort  of  analytic  retrospect  by  which  we  trace 
the  first  glimmerings  and  the  progressive  manifesta- 
tion in  Nature  of  those  ideas  which  have  authority 
over  our  own  minds. 

Phenomena  had  for  Plato  existence  without" 
reality,  that  is,  without  intelligibility  or  value. 
They  were  a  mere  appearance.  We  need  not  be 
surprised,  then,  that  he  refused  altogether  to  con- 
struct a  theology  by  the  poetic  interpretation  of 
phenomena  and  preferred  to  construct  one  allegori- 
cally  out  of  his  moral  conceptions,  the  good  and  the 


70  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

ideal.  Aristotle,  too,  while  adhering  incidentally, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  a  purified  astronomical  the- 
ology, capped  this  with  a  purified  moral  theology 
of  his  own.  The  Platonic  picture-gallery  of  ideas, 
with  the  abstract  principle  of  excellence  that 
unified  them,  gave  place  in  his  philosophy  to  an 
Ideal  realized  in  the  concrete  and  existing  as  an 
individual.  We  may  venture  to  say  that  among 
the  thinkers  of  all  nations  Aristotle  was  the  first 
to  reach  the  conception  of  what  may  fitly  be  called 
God.  Neither  the  national  deity  of  the  Hebrews, 
as  then  conceived,  nor  the  natural  deities  of  the 
Gentiles,  nor  the  half-physical,  half-logical  abstrac- 
tions of  the  earlier  Greek  philosophers  really 
corresponded  to  the  notion  of  a  being  spiritual,, 
personal,  and  perfect,  immutable  without  being ' 
abstract,  and  omnipotent  without  effort  and  with- 
out degradation.  Aristotle  first  constructed  this 
ideal,  not  out  of  his  fancy,  but  by  building  on  the 
solid  ground  of  human  nature  and  following  to 
their  point  of  union  the  lines  which  moral  aspira- 
tion and  effort  actually  follow.  Nay,  the  ideal 
he  pointed  to  was  to  be  the  goal  not  of  human  life 
only  but  of  natural  life  inall  its  forms.  The 
analytic  study  of  Nature  (a  study  which  at  the 
same  time  must  be  imaginative  and  sympathetic) 
could  guide  us  to  the  conception  of  her  inner 
needs  and  tendencies  and  of  what  their  proper 
fulfilment  would  be.      We  could  then  see  that  this 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  71 

fulfilment  would  lie  in  intelligence  and  thought. 
Growth  is  for  the  sake  of  the  fruition  of  life,  and 
the  fruition  of  life  consists  in  the  pursuit  and 
attainment  of  objects.  The  moral  virtues  belong 
to  the  pursuit,  the  intellectual  to  the  attainment. 
Knowledge  is  the  ft^rl  of  gjl  AnrlPfuz-onr^  thQ.  J nstifi- 
^ation  aQj]  fnlfilr'ent  nf  nU  ffiP'n'tji  Intelligence 
is  the  clarification  of  love. 

A  being,  then,  whose  life  should  be  a  life  of 
pure  and  complete  knowledge,  would  embody  the 
goal  toward  which  all  Nature  strives.  When  we 
ponder  duly  the  short  phrases  in  which  Aristotle 
propounds  his  conception  of  God  we  find  that  he 
has  called  up  before  us  the  noblest  possible  object 
of  human  thought,  the  presentiment  of  that 
thought's  perfect  fulfilment.  There  is  no  alloy 
of  naturalism  in  this  conception,  and  at  the  same 
time  no  suspicion  of  irrelevancy.  This  God  is  not 
a  mere  title  of  honour  for  the  psycho-physical 
universe,  confusedly  conceived  and  lumped  to- 
gether; he  is  an  ultra-mundane  ideal,  to  be  an 
inviolate  standard  and  goal  for  all  moving  reality. 
Yet  he  is  not  irrelevant  to  the  facts  and  forces  of 
the  world,  not  the  dream  of  an  abstracted  poet. 
He  is  an  idea  which  reality  everywhere  evokes  in 
evoking  its  own  deepest  craving  and  need.  Noth- 
ing is  so  pertinent  and  momentous  in  life  as  the 
object  we  are  trying  to  attain  by  thought  or 
action,  since  that  object  is  the  source  of  our  in- 


72  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

spiration  and  the  standard  of  our  success.  Thus 
Aristotle's  God  is  not  superfluous,  not  invented. 
This  theology  is  a  true  idealism,  I  mean  an  ideal- 
;  ism  itself  purely  ideal,  which  establishes  the 
•  authority  of  human  demands,  ethical,  and  logical, 
without  impugning  the  existence  or  efficacy  of  that 
material  universe  which  it  endows  with  a  meaning 
and  a  standard. 

Yet  this  rational  conception,  the  natural  out- 
growth of  the  Socratic  philosophy,  establishes  a 
dualism  between  the  actual  and  the  ideal  against 
which  the  human  mind  easily  rebels.  Aristotle 
himself  was  hardly  faithful  to  it.  He  tried  to 
prove  the  existence  of  his  God,  and  existence  is 
something  quite  irrelevant  to  an  ideal.  This  con- 
fusion is  very  excusable,  especially  in  an  age 
when  the  strictly  mechanical  view  of  Nature  still 
seemed  hopelessly  inadequate.  Aristotle  conse- 
quently tried  to  understand  the  natural  world  by 
viewing  it  systematically  from  the  point  of  view 
of  moral  science,  as  Plato  had  done  less  coherently 
in  his  myths;  and  hence  came  what  we  must  re- 
gard as  the  great  error  of  Aristotle's  philosophy, 
the  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  final  causes  and  in  the 
preexistence  of  entelechies.  But,  apart  from  this 
unhappy  question  of  existence,  which  is,  as  we 
have  said,  irrelevant  to  an  ideal,  Aristotle's  concep- 
tion of  God  remains,  perhaps,  the  most  philosophi- 
cal that  has  yet  been  constructed.     Without  any 


THE  DISSOLUTION  OF   PAGANISM  73 

concessions  to  sentiment  or  superstition,  it  presents 
us  with  a  sublime  vision  of  the  essentially  human, 
of  a  nature  as  free  from  an  unworthy  anthropo- 
morphism as  from  an  inhuman  abstractness.  It  is 
made  both  human  and  superhuman  by  the  same 
principle  of  idealization.  It  is  the  final  cause  of 
Nature  and  man,  the  realization  of  their  imminent 
upward  effort,  the  essence  that  would  contain  all 
their  values  and  escape  all  their  imperfections. 

We  may  well  doubt,  however,  whether  men  in 
general  will  ever  be  ready  to  accept  so  austere  a 
theology  in  guise  of  a  religion ;  they  were  certainly 
not  ready  to  do  so  at  the  end  of  the  classical 
period.  The  inheritance  of  Paganism  fell  instead 
to  Christianity,  in  which  ethical  and  naturalistic 
elements  were  again  united,  although  united  in  a 
new  way.  For,  while  the  scheme  of  Paganism, 
and  of  all  the  philosophies  that  sought  to  rational- 
ize Paganism,  was  cosmic  and  static,  the  scheme 
of  Christianity  was  historical.  They  spoke  of  the 
dynamic  relations  of  heaven  and  earth,  or  of  the 
immutable  hierarchy  of  ideas  and  essences;  even 
Aristotle's  God  was  somehow  in  spatial  relations 
to  the  Universe  which  he  set  in  motion.  The  re- 
ligion of  the  Hebrews,  on  the  other  hand,  had  been 
essentially  historical  and  civic :  it  had  been  con- 
cerned with  the  moral  destinies  of  Israel  and  the 
dealings  of  Jehovah  with  his  people.  Christianity 
inherited  this  historical   character;   its   mysteries 


74  POETBY   AND  RELIGION 

occurred  in  time.  Not  only  the  redemption  of  the 
world  but  the  vocation  and  sanctification  of  the  in- 
dividual were  progressive,  and  when  the  habits  and 
problems  of  Christian  theology  were  carried  over 
by  the  German  idealists  into  the  region  of  pure 
metaphysics,  the  systems  they  conceived  were  still 
systems  of  evolution.  God  was  to  be  manifest  in 
the  development  of  things.  For  Christianity  in  its 
own  way  had  spoken  from  the  beginning  of  a  grad- 
ual and  yet  to  be  completed  descent  of  the  divine 
into  the  natural  by  the  agency  of  prophecy,  law, 
and  sacramental  institutions;  it  had  represented 
the  relations  of  God  to  man  in  a  vast  historic 
drama,  of  which  creation  constituted  the  opening, 
the  fall  and  redemption  the  nexus,  and  the  last 
judgment  the  unravelling. 

Thus  appeared  a  new  scheme  for  the  unification 
of  the  natural  and  the  moral.  The  harmony  which 
the  old  religion  had  failed  to  establish  in  space  and 
in  Nature,  the  new  sought  to  establish  in  history 
and  in  time.  It  was  hoped  that  life  and  experi- 
ence, sin  and  redemption,  might  manifest  that 
divinity  which  had  fled  out  of  the  sea  and  sky,  and 
which  it  seemed  sacrilege  to  identify  any  longer 
with  the  animal  vitality  of  the  universe.  Whether 
the  same  criticism  that  disintegrated  mythology 
and  isolated  its  elements  of  science  and  of  poetry 
would  not  be  fatal  to  the  new  combination  of  the 
moral  and  the  factual  in  the  history  of  man,  is 


THE  DISSOLUTION   OF   PAGANISM  75 

hardly  a  question  for  us  here.  SufiB.ce  it  to  point 
out  the  problem  and  to  register  the  solution  which 
was  found  in  the  ancient  world  to  the  analogous 
problem  that  presented  itself  there.  The  first  im- 
pulse of  the  imagination  is  always  to  combine  in 
the  object  all  the  elements  which  lie  together  in 
the  mind,  to  project  them  indiscriminately  into  a 
single  conception  of  reality,  enriched  with  as  many 
qualities  as  there  are  phases  and  values  in  our 
experience.  But  these  phases  and  values  have 
diverse  origins  and  do  not  permanently  hang  to- 
gether. It  becomes  after  a  while  impossible  to 
keep  them  attached  to  a  single  image;  they  have 
to  be  distributed  according  to  their  true  order  and 
connections,  some  objectified  into  a  physical  uni- 
verse of  mechanism  and  law,  others  built  into  a 
system  of  rational  objects,  into  a  hierarchy  of  logi- 
cal and  moral  ideas.  So  the  lovely  pantheon  of  the  f 
Greeks  yielded  in  time  to  analysis  and  was  dis- 
solved into  abstract  science  and  conscious  fable. 
So,  too,  the  body  and  soul  of  later  religions  may 
come  to  be  divided,  when  they  render  back  to  earth 
what  they  contain  of  positive  history  and  to  the 
heaven  of  man's  indomitable  idealism  what  they 
contain  of  aspiration  and  hope. 


IV 

THE  POETRY  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA 

The  deathbed  of  Paganism  was  surrounded  by 
doctors.  Some,  the  Stoics,  advised  a  conversion 
into  pantheism  (with  an  allegorical  interpretation 
of  mythology  to  serve  the  purposes  of  edification) ; 
others,  the  Neo-Platonists,  prescribed  instead  a 
supernatural  philosophy,  where  the  efficacy  of  all 
traditional  rites  would  be  justified  by  incorporation 
into  a  system  of  universal  magic,  and  the  gods 
would  find  their  place  among  the  legions  of  spirits 
and  demons  that  were  to  people  the  concentric 
spheres.  But  these  doctors  had  no  knowledge  of 
the  patient's  natural  constitution  ;  their  medicines, 
prescribed  with  the  best  intentions,  were  in  truth 
poisons  and  only  hastened  the  inevitable  end. 
Nor  had  the  unfortunate  doctors  the  consolation 
of  being  heirs.  Parasites  that  they  were,  they  per- 
ished with  the  patron  on  whose  substance  th^y  had 
fed,  and  Christianity,  their  despised  rival,  came 
into  sole  possession. 

Yet  Neo-Platonism,  for  all  we  can  see,  responded 
as  well  as  Christianity  to  the  needs  of  the  time, 
76 


THE  POETRY  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA        77 

and  had  besides  great  external  advantages  in  its 
alliance  with  tradition,  with  civil  power,  and  with 
philosophy.  If  the  demands  of  the  age  were  for 
a  revealed  religion  and  an  ascetic  morality,  Neo- 
Platonism  could  satisfy  them  to  the  full.  Why, 
then,  should  the  Hellenic  world  have  broken  with 
the  creations  of  its  own  genius,  so  plastic,  elo- 
quent, and  full  of  resource,  to  run  after  foreign 
gods  and  new  doctrines  that  must  naturally  have 
been  stumbling-blocks  to  its  prejudices,  and  fool- 
ishness to  its  intelligence  ?  Shall  we  say  that  the 
triumph  of  Christianity  was  a  miracle  ?  Is  it  not 
a  doubtful  encomium  on  a  religion  to  say  that  only 
by  miracle  could  it  come  to  be  believed?  Per- 
haps the  forces  of  human  reason  and  emotion  suf- 
fice to  explain  this  faith.  We  prefer  to  think  so ; 
otherwise,  however  complete  and  final  the  triumph 
of  Christianity  might  be,  it  would  not  be  justified 
or  beneficent. 

Neo-Platonism  arose  in  the  midst  of  the  same 
con4i_tions  as  Christianity.  There  was  weariness 
and  disgust  with  the  life  of  nature,  decay  of  polit- 
icaP  virtue,  desire  for  some  personal  and  super- 
natural good.  It  was  hardly  necessary  to  preach 
the  doctrine  of  original  sin  to  that  society ;  the  vis- 
ible blight  that  had  fallen  on  classic  civilization 
was  proof  enough  of  that.  What  it  was  necessary 
to  preach  was  redemption.  It  was  necessary  to 
point  to  some  sphere  of  refuge  and  of  healthful 


78  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

resort,  where  the  ignominies  and  the  frivolities  of 
this  world  might  be  forgotten,  and  where  the  hun- 
ger of  a  heart  left  empty  by  its  corroding  passions 
might  be  finally  satisfied.  .  But  where  find  such  a 
supernatural  world  ?  By  what  revelation  learn  its 
nature  and  be  assured  of  its  existence  ? 

Neo-Platonism  opened  vistas  into  the  supernat- 
ural, but  the  avenues  of  approach  which  it  had 
chosen  and  the  principle  which  had  given  form  to 
its  system  foredoomed  it  to  failure  as  a  religion. 
This  avenue  was  dialectic,  and  this  principle  the 
hypostasis  of  abstractions.  Plato  had  pointed  out 
this  path  in  his  genial  allegories.  He  had,  by  a 
poetical  figure,  turned  the  ideas  of  reason  into  the 
component  forces  of  creation.  This  was,  with  him, 
a  method  of  expression,  but  being  the  only  method 
he  was  inclined  to  employ,  it  naturally  entangled 
and  occasionally,  perhaps,  deceived  his  intelligence ; 
for  a  poet  easily  mistakes  his  inspired  tropes  for 
the  physiology  of  Nature.  Yet  Platonic  dogma, 
even  when  meant  as  such,  retained  the  transparency 
and  significance  of  a  myth ;  philosophy  was  still  a 
language  for  the  expressioji  of  experience,  and  dia- 
lectic a  method  and  not  a  creed.  But  the  master's 
counters,  current  during  six  centuries  of  intellect- 
ual decadence,  had  become  his  disciples'  money. 
Each  of  his  abstractions  seemed  to  them  a  dis- 
covery, each  of  his  metaphors  a  revelation.  The 
myths  of  the  great  dialogues,  and,  above  all,  the 


THE   POETRY  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA         79 

fanciful  machinery  of  the  Tim  sens,  interpreted  with 
an  incredible  literalness  and  naive  earnestness,  such 
as  only  Biblical  exegesis  can  rival,  formed  the 
starting  point  of  the  new  revelation.  The  method 
and  insight  thus  obtained  were  then  employed  in 
filling  the  lacimce  of  the  system  and  spreading  its 
wings  wider  and  wider,  until  a  prodigious  hier- 
archy of  supernatural  existences  had  been  invented, 
from  which  the  natural  world  was  made  to  depend 
as  a  last  link  and  lowest  emanation. 

The  baselessness  and  elaboration  of  this  theology 
were,  of  course,  far  from  being  obstacles  to  its  suc- 
cess in  such  an  age.  On  the  contrary,  the  less  evi- 
dence could  be  found  in  common  experience  for 
what  a  man  appeared  to  know,  the  more  deeply, 
people  inferred,  must  he  be  versed  in  supernatural 
lore,  and  the  greater,  accordingly,  was  his  author- 
ity. Nor  was  the  spell  of  personal  genius  and  even 
holiness  wanting  in  the  leaders  of  the  new  philoso- 
phy to  lend  it  colour  and  persuasiveness  with  the 
many,  to  whom  metaphysical  conceptions  are  less 
impressive  than  is  an  eloquent  personality,  or  a 
reputation  for  miraculous  powers.  Plotj-iius,  to 
speak  only  of  the  greatest  of  the  sect,  had,  in  fact, 
a  notable  success  in  his  day.  His  lectures  at  Eome, 
we  are  told,  were  attended  by  all  the  fashion  and 
intellect  of  the  capital;  and  his  large  and  system- 
atic thought,  his  subtlety  and  precision,  his  com- 
paratively sober  eloquence,  and  his  assurance,  if  we 


80  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

may  say  so,  in  treading  the  clouds,  have  made  him 
at  all  times  a  great  authority  with  those  persons 
who  look  in  philosophy  rather  for  impressive  results 
than  for  solid  foundations.  His  contemporaries 
were  eminently  persons  of  that  type.  A  hungry 
man,  when  you  bring  him  bread,  does  not  stop  to 
make  scrupulous  inquiries  about  the  mill  or  the 
oven  from  which  you  bring  it. 

But  the  trouble  w^as  that  the  bread  of  Plotinus 
was  a  stone.  The  heart  cannot  feed  on  thin  and 
elaborate  abstractions, '  irrelevant  to  its  needs  and 
divorced  from  the  natural  objects  of  its  interest. 
Men  will  often  accept  the  baldest  fictions  as 
truths;  but  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  give  a 
human  meaning  to  vacuous  conceptions,  or  to  grow 
to  love  the  categories  of  logic,  interweaving  their 
image  with  the  actions  and  emotions  of  daily  life. 
Religion  must  spring  from  the  people;  it  must 
draw  its  form  from  tradition  and  its  substance 
from  the  national  imagination  and  conscience. 
Neo-Platonism  drew  both  form  and  substance  from 
a  System  of  abstract  thought.  Its  gods  were  still- 
born, being  generated  by  logical  dichotomy.  Only 
in  the  lower  purlieus  of  the  system,  filled  in  by 
accepting  current  superstitions,  was  there  any 
contact  with  something  like  vital  religious  forces. 
But  those  minor  elements  —  hopes  and  fears  about 
another  world,  fasts  and  penances,  ecstasies  and 
marvels  —  had  no  necessary  relation  to  that  meta- 


THE  POETRY  OF  CHRlSTtAN   DOGMA         81 

physical  system.  Such  practices  could  be  found 
in  every  religion,  in  every  philosophical  sect  of  the 
time.  The  Alexandrian  dialectic  of  the  super- 
natural accordingly  remained  a  mere  schema  or 
skeleton,  to  be  filled  in  with  the  materials  of 
some  real  religion,  if  such  a  religion  should  arise. 
As  such  a  schema  the  Neo-Platonic  system  actually 
passed  over  to  Christian  theology,  furnishing  the 
latter  with  its  categories,  its  language,  and  its  specu- 
lative method.  But  that  dialectic  served  in  Christi- 
anity to  give  form  to  a  religious  substance  furnished 
by  Hebrew  and  apostolic  tradition,  a  religious 
substance  such  as,  after  the  Pagan  religion  was 
discredited,  Neo-Platonism  necessarily  lacked  and 
was  powerless  to  generate. 

We  have  mentioned  apostolic  tradition.  It  is 
fortunately  not  requisite  for  our  purpose  to  discuss 
the  origin  of  this  tradition,  much  less  to  decide 
how  much  of  what  the  Christian  Church  eventually 
taught  might  be  traced  to  its  Founder.  That  is  a 
point  which  even  the.  most*  thorough  scholars  seem 
still  to  decide  mainly  by  their  prejudices,  perhaps 
because  other  material  is  lacking  on  which  to  base 
a  decision.  For  our  present  object  we 'may  admit 
the  most  extreme  hypotheses  as  equally  possible. 
The  whole  body  of  Catholic  doctrine  may  have  been 
contained  in  the  oral  teaching  of  Christ;  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  historical  Jesus  may  not  have 
existed  at  all,  or  may  have  been  one  among  many 


82  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

obscure  Jewish  revolutionists,  the  one  who,  by 
accident,  came  afterward  to  be  regarded  as  the 
initiator  of  a  movement  to  which  all  sorts  of  forces 
contributed,  and  with  which  he  had  really  had 
nothing  to  do.  In  either  case  the  fact  remains 
which  alone  interests  us  here ;  that  after  three  or 
four  centuries  of  confused  struggles,  an  institution 
emerged  which  called  itself  the  Catholic  Church. 
This  church,  possessed  of  a  recognized  hierarchy 
and  a  recognized  dogma,  triumphed,  both  over  the 
ancient  religion,  which  it  called  Paganism,  and 
over  its  many  collateral  rivals,  which  it  called 
heresies.  Why^did  it  triumph?  What  was  there 
in  its  novel  dogma  and  practice  that  enchained  the 
minds  that  Paganism  could  retain  no  longer,  and 
that  would  not  be  content  with  Neo-Platonism, 
native,  philosophical,  and  pliable  as  that  system 
was? 

The   answer,  to  be  adequate,  would  have  to  be 

long;  but  perhaps  we  may  indicate  the  spirit  in 

/^which  it  ought  to  be  conceived.      Paganism  was 

]    a  religion,  but  was  discarded  because  it  was  not 

<     supernatural:   Neo-Platonism   could  not  be  main- 

/     tained  because  it  was  not  a  religion.     Christianity 

/      was  both.      It  had  its  roots  in  a  national   faith,  l 

I       moulded  by  the  trials  and  passions  of  a  singularly  n 

Vreligious   people;    that  connection   with  Judaism 

gave  Christianity  a  foothold  in  history,  a  definite 

dogmatic  nucleus,  which  it  was  a  true  instinct  in 


THE  POETEY  OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA        83 

the  Church  never  to  abandon,  much  as  certain 
speculative  heresies  might  cry  out  against  the 
unnatural  union  of  a  theory  of  redemption  with 
one  of  creation,  and  of  a  world-denying  ascetic 
idealism,  which  Christianity  was  essentially,  with 
the  national  laws,  the  crude  deism,  and  the  strenu- 
ous worldliness  of  the  ancient  Jews.  However, 
had  the  Gnostic  or  Manichsean  heresies  been  vic- 
torious, Christianity  would  have  been  reduced  to 
a  floating  speculation:  its  hard  kernel  of  positive 
dogma,  of  Scripture,  and  of  hieratic  tradition  would 
have  been  dissolved.  It  would  have  ceased  to  rep- 
resent antiquity  or  to  hand  down  an  ancestral 
piety:  in  fine,  by  its  eagerness  to  express  itself 
as  a  perfect  philosophy,  it  would  have  ceased 
to  be  a  religion.  How  essential  an  element  its 
Hebraism  was,  we  can  see  now  by  the  study  of 
Protestantism,  a  group  of  heresies  in  which  the 
practical  instincts  and  sentimental  needs  of  the 
Teutonic  race  found  expression,  by  throwing  over 
more  or  less  completely  the  Catholic  dogma  and 
ritual.  Yet  in  this  revolution  the  Protestants 
maintained,  or  rather  increased,  the  intensity  of 
their  religious  consciousness,  chie^y  by  absorbing 
the  elements  of  Hebrew  law  and  prophecy  which 
they  could  find  in  the  Bible  and  casting  into  that, 
traditional  form  their  personal  conscience  or  their, 
national  ideals. 

How  inadequate,  on  the  other  hand,  this  Hebraic 


84  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

element  would  have  been  to  constitute  tlie  super- 
natural religion  that  was  now  needed,  appears  very 
clearly  from  the  case  of  Philo  Judseus.  Here  was 
a  man,  heir  to  all  the  piety  and  fervour  of  his  race, 
who  at  the  same  time  was  a  Neo-Platonist  three 
hundred  years  before  Plotinus  and,  as  it  were,  the 
first  Father  of  the  Church.  But  his  religion,  be- 
ing national,  was  not  communicable  and,  being 
positivistic,  was  at  fundamental  odds  with  the 
spirit  of  his  philosophy.  It  remained,  therefore, 
as  a  merely  personal  treasure  and  heirloom,  the 
possession  of  his  private  life :  his  disciples,  had 
he  had  any,  must  either  have  been  Jews  them- 
selves or  else  must  have  been  the  followers  merely 
of  his  philosophy.  His  religion  could  not  have 
passed  to  them;  they  would  have  regarded  it,  as 
we  might  regard  the  Christianity  of  Kant  or  the 
wife-worship  of  Corate,  as  a  private  circumstance, 
a  detached  trait,  less  damaging,  perhaps,  to  his 
philosophy  than  favourable  to  his  loyal  heart. 

Philo,  in  his  commentaries  on  the  Bible,  sought 
to  envelop  and  transform  every  detail  in  the 
light  of  Platonic  metaphysics.  His  interpreta- 
tions are  often  violent,  but  the  ingenuous  artifice 
of  them  would  have  delighted  his  contemporaries 
as  much  as  himself,  and  was  adopted  afterward  by 
all  the  Fathers  and  theologians  of  the  Church. 
Philo's  theology  was  thus  a  success,  even  a  model ; 
yet  he   failed,  because   of  the   inadequacy  of  his 


THE   POETRY    OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA         85 

religion.  What  interest,  what  relevance,  could  it 
have  for  any  Gentile  to  hear  about  the  deliverance 
of  Israel  out  of  Egypt  or  oat  of  Babylon,  or  about 
circumcision  and  prescribed  meats,  or  about  the 
sacrifices  in  the  Temple?  What  charm  or  credi- 
bility could  he  find  in  further  promises  of  glorious 
kingdoms,  flowing  with  milk  and  honey?  Such 
images  might  later  appeal  to  the  imagination  of 
New  England  Puritans  and  make  a  religion  for 
them:  but  what  meaning  could  they  have  to  the 
weary  Pagan?  No  doubt  the  Jews  carried  with 
them  an  ideal  of  righteousness  and  prosperity; 
but  the  Gentile  was  sick  of  heroes  and  high  priests 
and  founders  of  cities.  Stoic  virtues  were  as  vain 
in  his  eyes  as  Sybaritic  joys.  He  did  not  wish 
his  passions  to  be  flattered,  not  even  his  pride  or 
the  passion  for  a  social  Utopia.  He  wished  his 
passions  to  be  mortified  and  his  soul  to  be  re- 
deemed. He  would  not  look  for  a  Messiah,  unless 
he  could  find  him  on  a  cross. 

That  is  the  essence  of  the  matter.  What  over- 
came the  world,  because  it  was  what  the  world  \ 
desired,  was  not  a  moral  reform, —  for  tha|;  was 
preached  by  every  sect ;  not  an  ascetic  regimen  — 
for  that  was  practised  by  heathen  gymnosophists 
and  Pagan  philosophers  ;  not  brotherly  love  within 
the  Church  —  for  the  Jews  had  and  have  that  at 
least  in  equal  measure;  but  what  overcame  the 
world  was  what  Saint  Paul  said  he  would  alyrays 


y 


86  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

preach :  Christ  and  him  crucified.  Therein  was  a 
new  poetry,  a  new  ideal,  a  new  God.  Therein  was 
the  transcript  of  the  real  experience  of  humanity, 
as  men  found  it  in  their  inmost  souls  and  as  they 
were  dimly  aware  of  it  in  universal  history.  The 
moving  power  was  a  fable  —  for  who  stopped  to 
question  whether  its  elements  were  historical;  if 
only  its  meaning  were  profound  and  its  inspiratioa, 
jcontagious  ?  This  fable  had  points  of  attachment 
to  real  life  in  a  visible  brotherhood  and  in  an  extant 
worship,  as  well  as  in  the  religious  past  of  a  whole 
people.  At  the  same  time  it  carried  the  imagina- 
tion into  a  new  sphere ;  it  sanctified  the  poverty 
and  sorrow  at  which  Paganism  had  shuddered;  it 
awakened  tenderer  emotions,  revealed  more  humaji 
objects  of  adoration,  and  furnished  subtler  instru- 
ments of  grace.  It  was  a  whole  world  of  poetry., 
descended^ among  men,  like  tlie^'angels  at  the 
Nativity,  doubling,  as  it  were,  their  habitation,  so 
that  they  might  move  through  supernatural  realms 
in  the  spirit  while  they  walked  the  earth  in  the 
flesh.  The  consciousness  of  new  loves,  new  duties, 
fresh  consolations,  and  luminous  unutterable  hopes 
accompanied  them  wherever  they  went.  They 
stopped  willingly  in  the  midst  of  their  business  for 
recollection,  like  men  in  love ;  they  sought  to 
stimulate  their  imaginations,  to  focus,  as  it  were, 
the  long  vistas  of  an  invisible  landscape. 
If  the  importunity  of  affairs  or  of  ill-subdued  pas- 


THE  POETRY   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA        87 

sions  disturbed  that  dream,  they  could  still  return 
to  it  at  leisure  in  the  solitude  of  some  shrine  or 
under  the  spell  of  some  canticle  or  of  some  sacra- 
mental image ;  and  meantime  they  could  keep  their 
faith  in  reserve  as  their  secret  and  their  resource. 
The  longer  the  vision  lasted  and  the  steadier  it  be- 
came, the  more  closely,  of  course,  was  it  intertwined 
with  daily  acts  and  common  affections  ;  and  as  real 
life  gradually  enriched  that  vision  with  its  sugges- 
tions, so  religion  in  turn  gradually  coloured  common 
life  with  its  unearthly  light.  In  the  saint,  in  the 
soul  that  had  become  already  the  perpetual  citizen  of 
that  higher  sphere,  nothing  in  this  world  remained 
without  reference  to  the  other,  nor  was  anything 
done  save  for  a  supernatural  end.  Thus  the  re- 
demption was  actually  accomplished  and  the  soul 
was  lifted  above  the  conditions  of  this  life,  so  that 
death  itself  could  bring  but  a  slight  and  unessential 
change  of  environment. 

Morbid  as  this  species  of  faith  may  seem,  vision- 
ary as  it  certainly  was,  it  is  not  to  be  confused 
with  an  arbitrary  madness  or  with  personal  illu- 
sions. Two  circumstances  raised  this  imaginative 
piety  to  a  high  dignity  and  made  it  compatible  with 
greaE  accomplishments,  both  in  thought  and  in  action. 
In  the  first  place  the  religious  world  constituted  a 
system  complete  and  consistent  within  itself.  There 
was  occasion  within  it  for  the  exercise  of  reason, 
for  the  awakening  and  discipline  of  emotion,  for 


88  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

the  exertion  of  effort.  As  music,  for  all  that  it 
contains  nothing  of  a  material  or  practical  nature, 
offers  a  field  for  the  development  of  human  faculty 
and  presents  laws  and  conditions  which,  within  its 
sphere,  must  be  obeyed  and  which  reward  obedi- 
ence with  the  keenest  and  purest  pleasures ;  so  a 
supernatural  religion,  when  it  is  traditional  and 
systematic  like  Christianity,  offers  another  world, 
almost  as  vast  and  solid  as  the  real  one,  in  which 
the  soul  may  develop.  In  entering  it  we  d^  not 
enter  a  sphere  of  arbitrary  dreams,  but  a  sphere  of 
law  where  learning,  experience,  and  happiness  may 
be  gained.  There  is  more  method,  more  reason,  in 
such  madness*  than  in  the  sanity  of  most  people. 
The  world  of  the  Christian  imagination  was  emi- 
nently a  field  for  moral  experience;  moral  ideas 
were  there  objectified  into  supernaturar  forces, 
and  instead  of  being  obscured  as  in  the  real  world 
by  irrational  accidents  formed  an  intelligible_cos- 
mos,  vast,  massive,  and  steadfast.  For  this  reason 
the  believer  in  any  adequate  and  mature  super- 
natural religion  clings  to  it  with  such  strange 
tenacity  and  regards  it  as  his  highest  heritage, 
while  the  outsider,  whose  imagination  speaks 
another  language  or  is  dumb  altogether,  wonders 
how  so  wild  a  fiction  can  take  root  in  a  reasonable 
mind. 

The  other  circumstance  that  ennobled  the  Chris- 
tian system  was  that  all  its  parts  had  some  sig- 


THE  POETRY   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA        89 

^nificarice  and  poetic  truth,  although  they  contained, 
oF^needed  to  contain,  nothing  empirically  real. 
The  system  was  a  great  poem  which,  besides  being 
well  constructed  in  itself,  was  allegorical  of  actual 
experience,  and  contained,  as  in  a  hieroglyph,  a 
very  deep  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  the 
human  mind.  For  what  was  the  object  that  un- 
folded itself  before  the  Christian  imagination,  the 
vision  that  converted  and  regenerated  the  world  ? 
It  was  a  picture  of  human  destiny.  It  was  an  epic,. 
containing,  as  it  were,  the  moral  autobiography  of 
man.  The  object  of  Pagan  religion  and  philosophy 
had  been  a  picture  of  the  material  cosmos,  con- 
ceived as  a  vast  animal  and  inhabited  by  a  multi- 
tude of  individual  spirits.  Even  the  Neo-Platonists 
thought  of  nothing  else,  much  as  they  might  multi- 
ply abstract  names  for  its  principles  and  fancifully 
confuse  them  with  the .  spheres./  It  was  always  a" 
vast,  living,  physical  engine,  a  cosmos  of  life  in 
which  man  had  a  determinate  province.  His 
spirit,  losing  its  personality,  might  be  absorbed 
into  the  ethereal  element  from  which  it  came ;  but 
this  emanation  and  absorption  was  itself  an  tin- 
changing  process^  the  systole  and  diastole  of  the 
universal  heart.  Practical  religion  consisted  in 
honouring  the  nearest  gods  and  accepting  from 
them  man's  apportioned  goods,  not  without  look- 
ing, perhaps,  with  a  reverence  that  needed  no 
ritual,  to  the  enveloping  whole  that  prescribed  to 


90  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

gods  and  men  their  respective  functions.  Thus 
even  Neo-Platonisra  represented  man  as  a  minor 
incident  in  the  universe,  supernatural  though  that 
universe  might  be.  The  spiritual  spheres  were 
only  the  invisible  repetitions  of  the  visible,  as  the 
Platonic  ideas  from  the  beginning  had  been  only 
a  dialectic  reduplication  of  the  objects  in  this 
world.  It  was  against  this  allotment  that  the 
soul  was  rebelling.  It  was  looking  for  a  deliver- 
ance that  should  be  not  so  much  the  conscious- 
ness of  something  higher  as  the  hope  of  some- 
thing better. 

Now,  the  great  characteristic  of  Christianity, 
inherited  from  Judaism,  was  that  its  scheme  was 
historical]  Not  existences  but  events  were  the 
subject  of  its  primary  interest.  It  presented  a 
story,  not  a  cosmology.  It  was  an  Q^ic  in  which 
there  was,  of  course,  superhuman  machinery,  but 
of  which  the  subject  was  man,  and,  notable  cir- 
cumstance, the  Hero  was  a  man  as  well.  Like 
Buddhism,  it  gave  the  highest  lion  our  to  a  man 
who  could  lead  his  fellow-men  to  perfection.  What 
had  previously  been  the  divine  reality  —  the  engine 
of  Nature  —  now  became  a  temporary  stage,  built 
for  the  exigencies  of  a  human  drama.  What  had 
been  before  a  detail  of  the  edifice  —  the  _  life  of 
man  —  now  became  the  argument  and  purpbsB 
of  the  whole  creation.  Notable  transformation,  on 
which  the  philosopher  cannot  meditate  too  much. 


THE   POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOGMA         91 

Was  Christianity  right  in  saying  that  the  world 
was  made  for  man  ?  Was  the  account  it  adopted 
of  the  method  and  causes  of  Creation  conceivably 
correct?  Was  the  garden  of  Eden  a  historical 
reality,  and  were  the  Hebrew  prophecies  announce- 
ments of  the  advent  of  Jesus  Christ?  Did  the 
deluge  come  because  of  man's  wickedness,  and  will 
the  last  day  coincide  with  the  dramatic  denouement 
of  the  Church's  history  ?LIn  other  words,  is  the 
spiritual  experience  of  man  the  explanation  of  the 
universe?  Certainly  not,  if  we  are  thinking  of  a 
scientific,  not  of  a  poetical  explanation.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  man  is  a  product  of  laws  which  must  also 
destroy  him,  and  which,  as  Spinoza  would  say, 
infinitely  exceed  him  in  their  scope  and  power. 
His  welfare  is  indifferent  to  the  stars,  but  de- 
pendent on  them.  And  yet  that  counter-Coper- 
nican  revolution  accomplished  by  Christianity  — 
a  revolution  which  Kant  should  hardly  have 
attributed  to  himself  —  which  put  man  in  the 
centre  of  the  universe  and  made  the  stars  circle 
about  him,  must  have  some  kind  of  justification. 
And  indeed  its  justification  (if  we  may  be  so  brief 
on  so  great  a  subject)  is  that  what  is  false  in 
the  science  of  facts  may  be  true  in  the  science  of 
values.  While  the  existence  of  things  must  be 
understood  by  referring  them  to  their  causesy^^ 
which  are  mechanical,  their  functions  can  only 
be  explained  by  what  is  interesting  in  their  results,  \ 


92  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

in  other  words,  by  their  relation  to  human  natura 
and  to  human  happiness. 

The  Christian  drama  was  a  magnificent  poetic 
rendering  of  this  side  of  the  matter,  a  side  which 
Socrates  had  envisaged  by  his  admirable  method, 
but  which  now  flooded  the  consciousness  of  man- 
kind with  torrential  emotions.  Christianity  was 
born  under  an  eclipse,  when  the  light  of  Kature 
was  obscured;  but  the  star  that  intercepted  that 
light  was  itself  luminous,  and  shed  on  succeed- 
ing ages  a  moonlike  radiance,  paler  and  sadder 
than  the  other,  but  no  less  divine,  and  meriting 
no  less  to  be  eternal.  Man  now  studied  his  own 
destiny,  as  he  had  before  studied  the  sky,  and 
the  woods,  and  the  sunny  depths  of  water;  and 
as  the  earlier  study  produced  in  his  soul  —  anima 
naturaliter  poeta  —  the  images  of  Zeus,  Pan,  and 
Nereus,  so  the  later  study  produced  the  images  of 
Jesus  and  of  Mary,  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  of  miracles 
and  sacraments.  The  observation  was  no  less  exact, 
the  translation  into  poetic  images  no  less  wonderful 
here  than  there.  To  trace  the  endless  transfigura- 
tion, with  all  its  unconscious  ingenuity  and  har- 
mony, might  be  the  theme  of  a  fascinating  science. 
Let  not  the  reader  fancy  that  in  Christianity  every- 
thing was  settled  by  records  and  traditions.  The 
idea  of  Christ  himself  had  to  be  constructed  by  the 
imagination  in  response  to  moral  demands,  tra- 
dition giving  only  the   barest   external   points   of 


THE   POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOGMA         93 

attachment.  ',  The  facts  were  nothing  until  they 
became  symbols ;  and  nothing  could  turn  them  into 
synrboTs'^xcept' an" eager  imagination  on  the  watch 
for  all  that  might  embody  its-  dreams. 
^  The  crucifixion,  for  example,  would  remain  a 
tragic  incident  without  further  significance,  if  we 
regard  it  merely  as  a  historical  fact ;  to  make  it 
a  religious  mystery,  an  idea  capable  of  converting 
the  world,  the  moral  imagination  must  transform 
it  into  something  that  happens  for  the  sake  of 
the  soul,  so  that  each  believer  may  say  to  him- 
self that  Christ  so  suffered  for  the  love  of  him. 
And  such  a  thought  is  surely  the  objectifica- 
tion  of  an  inner  impulse;  the  idea  of  Christ  be- 
comes something  spiritual,  something  poetical. 
What  literal  meaning  could  there  be  in  saying 
that  one  man  or  one  God  died  for  the  sake 
of  each  and  every  other  individual  ?  By  what 
effective  causal  principle  could  their  salvation  be 
thought  to  necessitate  his  death,  or  his  death  to 
make  possible  their  salvation  ?  By  an  varepov  irpo- 
repov  natural  to  the  imagination;  for  in  truth  the 
matter  is  reversed.  Christ's  death  is  a  symbol  of 
human  life.  Men  could  ^'  believe  in ''  his  death, 
because  it  was  a  figure  and  premonition  of  the 
burden  of  their  experience.  That  is  why,  when 
some  Apostle  told  them  the  story,  they  could  say 
to  him :  "  Sir,  I  perceive  that  thou  art  a  prophet : 
thou  hast  told  me  all  things  whatsoever  I  have 


94  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

ielt"  Thus  the  central  fact  of  all  Christ's  history, 
narrated  by  every  Evangelist,  could  still  be  nothing 
but  a  painful  incident,  as  unessential  to  the  Chris- 
tian religion  as  the  death  of  Socrates  to  the  Socratic 
philosophy,  were  it  not  transformed  by  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  believer  into  the  counterpart  of  his  own 

\  moral  need.  Then,  by  ceasing  to  be  viewed  as  a 
historical  fact,  the  death  of  Christ  becomes  a  re- 
ligious inspiration.  The  whole  of  Christian  doc- 
trine is  thus  religious  and  efficacious  only  when  it 
becomes  poetry,  because  only  then  is  it  the  felt 
counterpart  of  personal  experience  and  a  genuine 
expansion  of  human  life.  ^ 

'^ake,  as  another  example,  the  doctrine  of  eter- 
nal rewards  and  punishments.  Many  perplexed 
Christians  of  our  day  try  to  reconcile  this  spirited 
fable  with  their  modern  horror  of  physical  suffering 
and  their  detestation  of  cruelty;  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  image  of  men  suffering  unending 
tortures  in  retribution  for  a  few  ignorant  and 
sufficiently  wretched  sins  is,  even  as  poetry,  some- 
what repellent.  The  idea  of  torments  and  ven- 
geance is  happily  becoming  alien  to  our  society 
and  is  therefore  not  a  natural  vehicle  for  our  relig- 

^  ion.  Some  accordingly  reject  altogether  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  on  this  point,  which  is  too  strong  for 
their  nerves.  Their  objection,  of  course,  is  not 
simply  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  its  truth.  If 
they  asked  for  evidence,  would  they  believe  any- 


THE   POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOGMA        95 

thing?  Proofs  are  the  last  thing  looked  for  by 
a  truly  religious  mind  which  feels  the  imaginative 
fitness  of  its  faith  and  knows  instinctively  that,  in 
such  a  matter,  imaginative  fitness  is  all  that  can  be 
required.  The  reason  men  reject  the  doctrine  of 
eternal  punishment  is  that  they  find  it  distasteful 
or  unmeaning.  They  show,  by  the  nature  of  their 
objections,  that  they  acknowledge  poetic  propriety 
or  moral  truth  to  be  the  sole  criterion  of  religious 
credibility. 

But,  passing  over  the  change  of  sentiment  which 
gives  rise  to  this  change  of  doctrine,  let  us  inquire 
of  what  reality  Christian  eschatology  was  the  imagi- 
native rendering.  What  was  it  in  the  actual  life 
of  men  that  made  them  think  of  themselves  as 
hanging  between  eternal  bliss  and  eternal  perdi- 
tion ?  Was  it  not  the  diversity,  the  momentousness, 
and  the  finality  of  their  experience  here?  No 
doubt  the  desire  to  make  the  reversal  of  the  injus- 
tices of  this  world  as  melodramatic  and  picturesque 
as  possible  contributed  to  the  adoption  of  this  idea ; 
the  ideal  values  of  life  were  thus  contrasted  with 
its  apparent  values  in  the  most  absolute  and  graphic 
manner.  But  we  may  say  that  beneath  this  motive, 
based  on  the  exigences  of  exposition  and  edification, 
there  was  a  deeper  intuition.  There  was  the  genu- 
ine moralist's  sympathy  with  a  philosophic  and 
logical  view  of  immortality  rather  than  with  a 
superstitious   and   sentimental   one.  /  Another  life 


96  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

exists  and  is  infinitely  more  important  than  this 
life  J  but  it  is  reached  by  the  intuition  of  ideals, 
not  by  the  multiplication  of  phenomena;  it  is 
an  eternal  state  not  an  indefinite  succession  of 
changes.  Transitory  life  ends  for  the  Christian 
when  the  balance-sheet  of  his  individual  merits 
and  demerits  is  made  up,  and  the  eternity  that 
ensues  is  the  eternal  reality  of  those  values. 

For  the  Oriental,  who  believed  in  transmigrar 
tion,  the  individual  dissolved  into  an  infinity  of 
phases;  he  went  on  actually  and  perpetually,  as 
Nature  does ;  his  immortality  was  a  long  Purga- 
tory behind  which  a  shadowy  Hell  and  Heaven 
scarcely  appeared  in  the  form  of  annihilation  or 
absorption.  This  happened  because  the  Oriental 
mind  has  no  middle;  it  oscillates  between  ex- 
tremes and  passes  directly  from  sense  to  mysti- 
cism, and  back  again ;  it  lacks  virile  understanding 
and  intelligence  creative  of  form.  But  Christianity, 
following  in  this  the  Socratic  philosophy,  rose  to 
the  conception  of  eternal  essences,  forms  suspended 
above  the  flux  of  natural  things  and  expressing 
the  ideal  suggestions  and  rational  goals  of  expe- 
rience. Each  man,  for  Christianity,  has  an  immor- 
tal soul ;  each  life  has  the  potentiality  of  an  eternal 
meaning,  and  as  this  potentiality  is  or  is  not  actu- 
alized, as  this  meaning  is  or  is  not  expressed  in 
the  phenomena  of  this  life,  the  soul  is  eternally 
saved   or   lost.     As   the   tree   falleth,  so   it  lieth. 


THE   POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN  DOGMA         97 

The  finality  of  this  brief  and  personal  experiment, 
the  consequent  awful  solemnity  of  the  hour  of  death 
when  all  trial  is  over  and  when  the  eternal  sentence 
is  passed,  has  always  been  duly  felt  by  the  Chris- 
tian. The  Church,  indeed,  in  answer  to  the  demand 
for  a  more  refined  and  discriminating  presentation 
of  its  dogma,  introduced  the  temporary  discipline 
of  Purgatory,  in  which  the  virtues  already  stamped 
on  the  soul  might  be  brought  to  greater  clearness 
and  rid  of  the  alloy  of  imperfection;  but  this 
purification  allowed  no  essential  development,  no 
change  of  character  or  fate ;  the  soul  in  Purgatory 
was  already  saved,  already  holy. 

The  harshness  of  the  doctrine  of  eternal  judg- 
ment is  therefore  a  consequence  of  its  symbolic 
truth.  The  Church  might  have  been  less  absolute 
in  the  matter  had  she  yielded  more,  as  she  did  in 
the  doctrine  of  Purgatory,  to  the  desire  for  merely 
imaginary  extensions  of  human  experience.  But 
her  better  instincts  kept  her,  after  all,  to  the  moral 
interpretation  of  reality ;  and  the  facts  to  be  ren- 
dered were  uncompromising  enough.  Art  is  long, 
life  brief.  To  have  told  men  they  would  have  infi- 
nite opportunities  to  reform  and  to  advance  would 
have  been  to  feed  them  on  gratuitous  fictions  with- 
out raising  them,  as  it  was  the  function  of  Chris- 
tianity to  do,  to  a  consciousness  of  the  spiritual 
meaning  and  upshot  of  existence.  To  have  specu- 
lated about  the  infinite  extent  of  experience  and  its 


98  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

endless  transformations,  after  the  manner  of  the 
barbarous  religions,  and  never  to  have  conceived 
its  moral  essence,  -^Ivould  have  been  to  encourage  a 
dream  which  may  bj  chance  be  prophetic,  but 
which  is  as  devoid  of  ideal  meaning  as  of  empirical 
probability.  Christian  fictions  were  at  least  signifi- 
cant; they  beguiled  the  intellect,  no  doubt,  and 
were  mistaken  for  accounts  of  external  fact;  but 
they  enlightened  the  imagination ;  they  made  man 
understand,  as  never  before  or  since,  the  pathos  and 
nobility  of  his  life,  the  necessity  of  discipline,  the 
possibility  of  sanctity,  the  transcendence  and  the  hu- 
manity of  the  divine.  For  the  divine  was  reached 
by  the  idealization  of  the  human.  The  supernatu- 
ral was  an  allegory  of  the  natural,  and  rendered 
the  values  of  transitory  things  under  the  image  of 
eternal  existences.  Thus  the  finality  of  our  activity 
in  this  world,  together  with  the  eternity  of  its  ideal 
meanings,  was  admirably  rendered  by  the  Christian 
dogma  of  a  final  judgment. 

But  there  was  another  moral  truth  which  was 
impressed  upon  the  believer  by  that  doctrine  and 
which  could  not  be  enforced  in  any  other  way  with- 
out presupposing  in  him  an  unusual  philosophic 
acumen  and  elevation  of  mind.  That  is  the  truth 
that  moral  distinctions  are  absolute.  A  cool  phi- 
losophy sufi&ces  to  show  us  that  moral  distinctions 
exist,  since  men  prefer  some  experiences  to  others 
and  can  by  their  action  bring  these  good  and  evil 


THE  POETRY   OF  CHRISTIAN   DOGMA         99 

experiences  upon  themselves  and  upon  their  fellows. 
But  a  survey  of  Nature  may  at  the  same  time  im- 
press us  with  the  fact  that  these  goods  and  evils 
are  singularly  mixed,  that  there  is  hardly  an  ad- 
vantage gained  which  is  not  bought  by  some  loss, 
or  any  loss  which  is  not  an  opportunity  for  the 
attainment  of  some  advantage.  While  it  would  be 
chimerical  to  pretend  that  such  compensation  was 
always  adequate,  and  that,  in  consequence,  no  one 
condition  was  ever  really  preferable  to  any  other, 
yet  the  perplexities  into  which  moral  aspiration  is 
thrown  by  these  contradictory  vistas  is  often  pro- 
ductive of  the  desire  to  reach  some  other  point  of 
view,  to  escape  into  what  is  irrationally  thought  to 
be  a  higher  category  than  the  moral.  The  serious 
consideration  of  those  things  which  are  right  accord- 
ing to  human  reason  and  interest  may  then  yield 
to  a  fanatical  reliance  on  some  facile  general  notion. 
It  may  be  thought,  for  instance,  that  what  is 
regular  or  necessary  or  universal  is  therefore  right 
and  good ;  thus  a  dazed  contemplation  of  the  actual 
may  take  the  place  o:^  the  determination  of  the 
ideal.  Mysticism  in  regard  to  the  better  and  the 
worse,  by  which  good  and  bad  are  woven  into  a 
seamless  garment  of  sorry  magnificence  in  which 
the  whole  universe  is  wrapped  up,  is  like  mysti- 
cism on  other  subjects ;  it  consists  in  the  theoretic 
renunciation  of  a  natural  attitude,  in  this  case  of 
the  natural  attitude  of  welcome  and  repulsion  in 


100  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

the  presence  of  various  things.  But  this  category- 
is  the  most  fundamental  of  all  those  that  the 
human  mind  employs,  and  it  cannot  be  surren- 
dered so  long  as  life  endures.  It  is  indeed  the 
conscious  echo  of  those  vital  instincts  by  whose 
operation  we  exist.  Levity  and  mysticism  may  do 
all  they  can  —  and  they  can  do  much  —  to  make 
men  think  moral  distinctions  unauthoritative,  be- 
cause moral  distinctions  may  be  either  ignored  or 
transcended.  Yet  the  essential  assertion  that  one 
thing  is  really  better  than  another  remains  involved 
in  every  act  of  every  living  being.  It  is  involved 
even  in  the  operation  of  abstract  thinking,  where 
a  cogent  conclusion,  being  still  coveted,  is  assumed 
to  be  a  good,  or  in  that  aesthetic  and  theoretic  en- 
thusiasm before  cosmic  laws,  which  is  the  human 
foundation  of  this  mysticism  itself. 

It  is  accordingly  a  moral  truth  which  no  subter- 
fuge can  elude,  that  some  things  are  really  better 
than  others.  In  the  daily  course  of  affairs  we  are 
constantly  in  the  presence  of  events  which  by  turn- 
ing out  one  way  or  the  other  produce  a  real,  an 
irrevocable,  increase  of  good  or  evil  in  the  world. 
The  complexities  of  life,  struggling  as  it  does 
amidst  irrational  forces,  may  make  the  attainment 
of  one  good  the  cause  of  the  unattainableness  of 
another ;  they  cannot  destroy  the  essential  desira- 
bility of  both.  The  niggardliness  of  Nature  can- 
not sterilize  the  ideal;    the  odious  circumstances 


THE  POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      101 

which  make  the  attainment  of  many  goods  condi- 
tional on  the  perpetration  of  some  evil,  and  which 
punish  every  virtue  by  some  incapacity  or  some 
abuse,  —  these  odious  circumstances  cannot  rob  any 
good  of  its  natural  sweetness,  nor  all  goods  to- 
gether of  their  conceptual  harmony.  To  the  heart 
that  has  felt  it  and  that  is  the  true  judge,  every 
loss  is  irretrievable  and  every  joy  indestructible. 
Eventual  compensations  may  obliterate  the  memory 
of  these  values  but  cannot  destroy  their  reality. 
The  future  can  only  furnish  further  applications 
of  the  principle  by  which  they  arose  and  were 
justified. 

Now,  how  utter  this  moral  truth  imaginatively, 
how  clothe  it  in  an  image  that  might  render  its 
absoluteness  and  its  force  ?  Could  any  method  be 
better  than  to  say :  Your  eternal  destiny  is  hang- 
ing in  the  balance:  the  grace  of  God,  the  influ- 
ences of  others,  and  your  own  will  reacting  upon 
both  are  shaping  at  every  moment  issues  of  abso- 
lute importance.  What  happens  here  and  now 
decides  not  merely  incidental  pains  and  pleasures 
—  which  perhaps  a  brave  and  careless  spirit  might 
alike  despise  —  but  helps  to  determine  your  eternal 
destiny  of  joy  or  anguish,,  and  the  eternal  destiny 
of  your  neighbour.  In  place  of  the  confused  vistas 
of  the  empirical  world,  in  which  the  threads  of 
benefit  and  injury  might  seem  to  be  mingled  and 
lost,  the   imagination   substituted  the  clear  vision 


10*2  poeteV  and  religion 

of  Hell  and  Heaven;  while  the  determination  of 
our  destiny  was  made  to  depend  upon  obedience 
to  recognized  duties. 

Now  these  duties  may  often  have  been  far  from 
corresponding  to  those  which  reason  would  impose ; 
but  the  intention  and  the  principle  at  least  were 
sound.  It  was  felt  that  the  actions  and  passions  of 
this  world  breed  momentous  values,  values  which 
being  ideal  are  as  infinite  as  values  can  be  in  the 
estimation  of  reason  —  the  values  of  truth,  of  love, 
of  rationality,  of  perfection  —  although  both  the 
length  of  the  experience  in  which  they  arise  and 
the  number  of  persons  who  share  ttiat  experience 
may  be  extremely  limited.  But  the  mechanical 
measure  of  experience  in  length,  intensity,  or  mul- 
tiplication has  nothing  to  do  with  its  moral  signifi- 
cance in  realizing  truth  or  virtue.  Therefore  the 
difference  in  dignity  between  the  satisfactions  of 
reason  and  the  satisfactions  of  sense  is  fittingly 
rendered  by  the  infinite  disproportion  between 
heavenly  and  earthly  joys.  In  our  imaginative 
translation  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  the 
alternative  between  infinite  happiness  and  infinite 
misery  is  yawning  before  us,  because  the  alterna- 
tive between  rational  failure  or  success  is  actually 
present.  The  decisions  we  make  from  moment  to 
moment,  on  which  the  ideal  value  of  our  life  and 
character  depends,  actually  constitute  in  a  few 
years  a  decision  which  is  irrevocable. 


THE  POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      103 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments is  thus  in  harmony  with  moral  truths  which 
a  different  doctrine  might  have  obscured.  The 
good  souls  that  wish  to  fancy  that  everybody  will 
be  ultimately  saved,  subject  a  fable  to  standards 
appropriate  to  matters  of  fact,  and  thereby  deprive 
the  fable  of  that  moral  significance  which  is  its 
excuse  for  being.  If  every  one  is  ultimately  saved, 
there  is  nothing  truly  momentous  about  alternative 
events :  all  paths  lead  more  or  less  circuitously  to 
the  same  end.  The  only  ground  which  then  re- 
mains for  discriminating  the  better  from  the  worse 
is  the  pleasantness  or  unpleasantness  of  the  path 
to  salvation.  All  moral  meanings  inhere,  then,  in 
this  life,  and  the  other  life  is  without  significance. 
Heaven  comes  to  replace  life  empirically  without 
fulfilling  it  ideally.  We  are  reduced  for  our  moral 
standards  to  phenomenal  values,  to  the  worth  of 
life  in  transitory  feeling.  These  values  are  quite 
real,  but  they  are  not  those  which  poetry  and  re- 
ligion have  for  their  object.  They  are  values  pres- 
ent to  sense,  not  to  reason  and  imagination. 

The  ideal  of  a  supervening  general  bliss  presents 
indeed  an  abstract  desideratum,  but  not  the  ideal 
involved  in  the  actual  forces  of  life;  that  end 
would  have  no  rational  relation  to  its  primary 
factors;  it  would  not  be  built  on  our  instinctive 
preferences  but  would  abolish  them  by  a  miracu- 
lous dream,  following  alike  upon  every  species  of 


104  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

activity.  Moral  differences  would  have  existed 
merely  to  be  forgotten;  for  if  we  say  they  were 
remembered,  but  transcended  and  put  to  rest,  we 
plunge  into  an  even  worse  contradiction  to  the 
conscience  and  the  will.  For  if  we  say  that  the 
universal  bliss  consists  in  the  assurance,  mysti- 
cally received,  that  while  individual  experiences 
may  differ  in  value  they  all  equally  conduce  to 
the  perfection  of  the  universe,  we  deny  not  merely 
the  momentousness  but  even  the  elementary  valid- 
ity of  moral  distinctions.  We  assert  that  the 
best  idea  of  God  is  that  least  like  the  ideal  of 
man,  and  that  the  nearer  we  come  to  the  vision 
of  truth  the  farther  we  are  from  the  feeling  of 
preference.  In  our  attempt  to  extend  the  good 
we  thus  abolish  its  essence.  Our  religion  consists 
in  denying  the  authority  of  the  ideal,  which  is  its 
only  rational  foundation;  and  thus  that  religion, 
while  gaining  nothing  in  empirical  reality,  comes 
to  express  a  moral  falsehood  instead  of  a  moral 
truth. 

If  we  looked  in  religion  for  an  account  of  facts, 
as  most  people  do,  we  should  have  to  pass  a  very 
different  judgment  on  these  several  views.  The 
mechanical  world  is  a  connected  system  and  Nature 
seems  to  be  dynamically  one;  the  intuitions  on 
which  mysticism  feeds  are  therefore  true  intuitions. 
The  expectation  of  a  millennium  is  on  the  other 
hand   quite    visionary,   because    the    evidence    of 


THE  POETRY  OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA      105 

history,  while  it  shows  undeniable  progress  in 
many  directions,  shows  that  this  progress  is  essen- 
tially relative,  partial,  and  transitory.  As  for  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  judgment,  it  is  something 
wholly  out  of  relation  to  empirical  facts,  it  assumes 
the  existence  of  a  supernatural  sphere,  and  is  be- 
yond the  reach  of  scientific  evidence  of  any  kind. 
But  if  we  look  on  religion  as  on  a  kind  of  poetry, 
as  we  have  decided  here  to  do,  —  as  on  a  kind  of 
poetry  that  expresses  moral  values  and  reacts  benef- 
icently upon  life,  —  we  shall  see  that  the  Christian 
doctrine  is  alone  justified.  For  mysticism  is  not  an 
imaginative  construction  at  all  but  a ,  renunciation 
or  confusion  of  our  faculties ;  here  a  surrender  of 
the  human  ideal  in  the  presence  of  a  mechanical 
force  that  is  felt,  and  correctly  felt,  to  tend  to 
vaguer  results  or  rather  to  tend  to  nothing  in 
particular.  Mysticism  is  not  a  religion  but  a 
religious  disease.  The  idea  of  universal  salvation, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  the  expression  of  a  feeble 
sentimentality,  a  pleasant  reverie  without  structure 
or  significance.^  But  the  doctrine  of  eternal  re- 
wards and  punishments  is,  as  we  have  tried  to 
show,  an  expression  of  moral  truth,  a  poetic  ren- 
dering of  the  fact  that  rational  values  are  ideal, 
momentous,  and  irreversible. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  examples  and  to 
exhibit  the  various  parts  of  Christianity  as  so  many 
interpretations  of  human  life  in  its  ideal  aspects. 


106  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

But  we  are  not  attempting  to  narrate  facts  so  much 
as  to  advance  an  idea,  and  the  illustrations  given 
will  perhaps  suffice  to  make  our  conception  intelli- 
gible. There  is,  however,  a  possible  misunderstand- 
ing which  we  should  be  careful  to  avoid  in  this 
dangerous  field  of  philosophic  interpretation.  In 
saying  that  a  given  religion  was  the  poetic  trans- 
formation of  an  experience,  we  must  not  imagine 
that  it  was  thought  to  be  such  —  for  it  is  evident 
that  every  sincere  Christian  believed  in  the  literal 
and  empirical  reality  of  all  that  the  Christian  epic 
contained.  Nor  should  we  imagine  that  philo- 
sophic ideas,  or  general  reflections  on  life,  were  the 
origin  of  religion,  and  that  afterward  certain  useful 
myths,  known  to  be  such  by  their  authors,  were 
mistaken  for  history  and  for  literal  prophecy. 
That  sometimes  happens,  when  historians,  poets,  or 
philosophers  are  turned  by  the  unintelligent  venera- 
tion of  posterity  into  religious  proj)hets.  Such  was 
the  fate  of  Plato,  for  instance,  or  of  the  writer  of 
the  "  Song  of  Solomon " ;  but  no  great  and  living 
religion  was  ever  founded  in  that  way. 

Had  Christianity  or  any  other  religion  had  its 
basis  in  literary  or  philosophical  allegories, ,  it 
would  never  have  become  a  religion,  because  the 
poetry  of  it  would  never  have  been  interwoven 
with  the  figures  and  events  of  real  life.  No  tomb, 
no  relic,  no  material  miracle,  no  personal  deriva- 
tion  of   authority,  would  have   existed   to   serve 


THE  POETRY  OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      107 

as  the  nucleus  of  devotion  and  the  point  of 
junction  between  this  world  and  the  other.  The 
origin  of  Christian  dogma  lay  in  historic  facts 
and  in  doctrines  literally  meant  by  their  authors! 
It  is  one  of  the  greatest  possible  illusions  in  these" 
matters  to  fancy  that  the  meaning  which  we  see  in 
parables  and  mysteries  was  the  meaning  they  had 
in  the  beginning,  but  which  later  misinterpretation 
had  obscured.  On  the  contrary  —  as  a  glance  at 
any  incipient  religious  movement  now  going  on 
will  show  us  —  the  authors  of  doctrines,  however 
obvious  it  may  be  to  every  one  else  that  these 
dSctrines  have  only  a  figurative  validity,  are  the 
first  dupes  to  their  own  intuitions.  This  is  no  less 
true  of  metaphysical  theories  than  of  spontaneous 
superstitions :  did  their  promulgator  understand  the 
character  of  their  justification  he  would  give  him- 
self out  for  a  simple  poet,  appeal  only  to  cultivated 
minds,  and  never  turn  his  energies  to  stimulating 
private  delusions,  not  to  speak  of  public  fanaticisms. 
The  best  philosophers  seldom  perceive  the  poetic 
merit  of  their  systems. 

So  among  the  ancients  it  was  not  an  abstract 
observation  of  Nature,  with  conscious  allegory  su- 
pervening, that  was  the  origin  of  mythology,  but 
the  interpretation  was  spontaneous,  the  illusion 
was  radical,  a  consciousness  of  the  god's  presence 
was  the  first  impression  produced  by  the  phenom- 
enon.    Else,  in  this  case  too,  poetry  would  never 


108  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

have  become  superstition;  what  made  it  supersti- 
tion was  the  initial  incapacity  in  people  to  dis- 
criminate the  objects  of  imagination  from  those  of 
the  understanding.  The  fancy  thus  attached  its 
images,  without  distinguishing  their  ideal  locus, 
to  the  visible  world,  and  men  became  supersti- 
tious not  because  they  had  too  much  imagination, 
but  because  they  were  not  aware  that  they  had 
any. 

In  what  sense,  then,  are  we  justified  in  saying 
that  religion  expresses  moral  ideals  ?  In  the  sense 
that  moral  significance,  while  not  the  source  of 
religions,  is  the  criterion  of  their  value  and  the 
reason  why  they  may  deserve  to  endure.  Far  as 
the  conception  of  an  allegory  may  be  from  the 
minds  of  prophets,  yet  the  prophecy  can  only  take 
root  in  the  popular  imagination  if  it  recommends 
itself  to  some  human  interest.  There  must  be  some 
correspondence  between  the  doctrine  announced  or 
the  hopes  set  forth,  and  the  natural  demands  of 
the  human  spirit.  Otherwise,  although  the  new 
faith  might  be  preached,  it  would  not  be  accepted. 
The  significance  of  religious  doctrines  has  there- 
fore been  the  condition  of  their  spread,  their  main- 
tenance, and  their  development,  although  not  the 
condition  of  their  origin.  In  Darwinian  language, 
moral  significance  has  been  a  spontaneous  variation 
of  superstition,  and  this  variation  has  insured  its 
survival  as  a  religion.      For  religion  differs  from 


THE  POETRY   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA      109 

superstition  not  psychologically  but  morally,  not 
in  its  origin  but  in  its  worth.  This  worth,  when 
actually  felt  and  appreciated,  becomes  of  course  a 
dynamic  factor  and  contributes  like  other  psycho- 
logical elements  to  the  evolution  of  events;  but 
being  a  logical  harmony,  a  rational  beauty,  this 
worth  is  only  appreciable  by  a  few  minds,  and 
those  the  least  primitive  and  the  least  capable  of 
guiding  popular  movements.  Reason  is  powerless 
tq^found  religions,  although  it  is  alone  competent 
to^udge  them.  Good  religions  are  therefore  the 
product  of  unconscious  rationality,  of  imaginative 
impulses  fortunately  moral. 

Particularly  does  this  appear  in  the  early  his- 
tory of  Christianity.  Every  shade  of  heresy,  every 
kind  of  mixture  of  Christian  and  other  elements 
was  tried  and  found  advocates  ;  but  after  a  greater 
or  less  success  they  all  disappeared,  leaving  only 
the  Church  standing.  For  the  Church  had  known 
how  to  combine  those  dogmas  and  practices  in 
which  the  imagination  of  the  time,  and  to  a  great 
extent  of  all  times,  might  find  fitting  expression, 
^•^aginative  significance  was  the  touchstone  of 
orthodoxy;  tradition  itself  was  tested  by  this 
standard.  By  this  standard  the  canon  of  Scripture 
was  fixed,  so  as  neither  to  exclude  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, which  the  pure  metaphysicians  would  have 
rejected,  nor  to  accept  every  gospel  that  circulated 
under  the  name  of  an  apostle,  and  which  might 


110  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

please  a  wonder-loving  and  detail-loving  piety. 
By  the  same  criterion  the  ritual  was  composed, 
the  dogma  developed,  the  nature  of  Christ  defined, 
the  sacraments  and  discipline  of  the  Church  regu- 
lated. The  result  was  a  comprehensive  system 
where,  under  the  shadow  of  a  great  epic,  which 
expanded  and  interpreted  the  history  of  mankind 
from  the  Creation  to  the  Day  of  Doom,  a  place 
was  found  for  as  many  religious  instincts  and  as 
many  religious  traditions  as  possible  ;  while  at  the 
same  time  the  dialectic  proficiency  of  an  age  that 
inherited  the  discipline  of  Greek  philosophy,  intro- 
duced into  the  system  a  great  consistency  and  a 
great  metaphysical  subtlety.  Time  mellowed  and 
expanded  these  dogmas,  bringing  them  into  rela- 
tion with  the  needs  of  a  multiform  piety ;  a  justi- 
fication was  found  both  for  asceticism  and  for  a 
virtuous  naturalism,  both  for  contemplation  and 
for  action;  and  thus  it  became  possible  for  the 
Church  to  insinuate  her  sanctions  and  her  spirit 
into  the  motives  of  men,  and  to  embody  the  religion 
of  many  nations  during  many  ages. 

The  Church's  successes,  however,  were  not  all 
legitimate;  they  were  not  everywhere  due  to  a 
real  correspondence  between  her  forms  and  the 
ideal  life  of  men.  It  was  only  the  inhabitants  of 
the  Graeco-Eoman  world  that  were  quite  prepared 
to  understand  her.  When  the  sword,  or  the  author- 
ity  of  a  higher  worldly   civilization,  carried  her 


THE  POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      111 

influence  beyond  the  borders  of  the  Roman  Empire 
we  may  observe  that  her  authority  seldom  proved 
stable.  She  was  felt,  by  those  peoples  whose  im- 
aginative traditions  and  whose  moral  experience 
she  did  not  express,  to  be  something  alien  and 
artificial.  The  Teutonic  races  finally  threw  off 
what  they  felt  to  be  her  yoke.  If  they  recon- 
structed their  religion  out  of  elements  which  she 
had  furnished,  that  was  only  because  religion  is 
bound  to  be  traditional,  and  they  had  been  Chris- 
tians for  many  hundred  years.  A  wholly  new 
philosophy  or  poetry  could  not  have  taken  im- 
mediate root  in  their  minds ;  even  the  philosophy 
which  Germany  has  since  produced,  when  the  na- 
tional spirit  was  reaching,  so  to  speak,  its  majority, 
hardly  seems  able  to  constitute  an  independent 
religion,  but  takes  shelter  under  some  form  of 
Christianity,  however  much  the  spirit  of  that  re- 
ligion may  be  transformed. 

At  first,  indeed,  the  new  movement  took  the 
Bible  for  its  starting-point.  So  heterogeneous  a 
book,  which  was  already  habitually  interpreted 
in  so  many  fanciful  ways,  was  indeed  an  admi- 
rable basis  for  the  imagination  to  build  upon. 
The  self-reliant  and  dreamy  Teuton  could  spin 
out  of  the  Biblical  chronicles  and  rhapsodies  con- 
victions after  his  own  heart ;  while  his  fixed  per- 
suasion that  the  Bible  was  the  word  of  God,  was 
strengthened  (not  illegitimately)  by  his  ability  to 


112  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

make  it  express  his  own  moral  ideals.  The  in- 
tensity of  his  religion  was  proportionate  to  the 
degree  in  which  he  had  made  it  the  imaginative 
rendering  of  his  own  character. 

Protestantism  in  its  vital  elements  was  thus  a 
perfectly  new,  a  perfectly  spontaneous  religion. 
The  illusion  that  it  was  a  return  to  primitive 
Christianity  was  useful  for  controversial  purposes 
and  helped  to  justify  the  iconoclastic  passions  of 
the  time ;  but  this  illusion  did  not  touch  the  true 
essence  of  Protestantism,  nor  the  secret  of  its  legiti- 
macy and  power  as  a  religion.  This  was  its  new 
embodiment  of  human  ideals  in  imaginative  forms, 
whereby  those  ideals  became  explicit  and  found  a 
remarkable  expression  in  action.  These  ideals 
were  quite  Teutonic  and  looked  to  inner  sponta- 
neity and  outward  prosperity ;  they  were  more 
allied  to  those  of  the  Hebrews  than  to  those  of 
the  early  Christians,  whose  religion  was  all  mira- 
cles, asceticism,  and  withdrawal  from  the  world. 
Indeed  we  may  say  that  the  typical  Protestant 
was  himself  his  own  church  and  made  the  selec- 
tion and  interpretation  of  tradition  according  to 
the  demands  of  his  personal  spirit.  What  the 
Fathers  did  for  the  Church  in  the  fourth  century, 
the  Keformers  did  for  themselves  in  the  sixteenth, 
and  have  continued  to  do  on  the  occasion  of  their 
various  appearances. 

If  we  judge  this  interpretation  by  poetic  stand- 


THE  POETRY   OP   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      118 

ards,  we  cannot  resist  the  conclusion  that  the  old 
version  was  infinitely  superior.  The  Protestant, 
with  his  personal  resources,  was  reduced  to  making 
grotesquely  and  partially  that  translation  of  moral 
life  which  the  Fathers  had  made  comprehensively 
and  beautifully,  inspired  as  they  were  by  all  the 
experience  of  antiquity  and  all  the  hopes  of  youth- 
ful Christendom.  Nevertheless,  Protestantism  has 
the  unmistakable  character  of  a  genuine  religion, 
a  character  which  tradition  passively  accepted  and 
dogma,  regarded  as  so  much  external  truth,  may 
easily  lose ;  it  is  in  correspondence  with  the  actual 
ideals  and  instincts  of  the  believer;  it  is  the  self- 
assertion  of  a  living  soul.  Its  meagreness  and 
eccentricity  are  simply  evidences  of  its  personal 
basis.  It  is  in  full  harmony  with  the  practical 
impulses  it  comes  to  sanction,  and  accordingly  it 
gains  in  efficiency  all  that  it  loses  in  dignity  and 
truth. 

The  principle  by  which  the  Christian  system  had 
developed,  although  reapplied  by  the  Protestants  to 
their  own  inner  life,  was  not  understood  by  them  in 
its  historical  applications.  They  had  little  sym- 
pathy with  the  spiritual  needs  and  habits  of  that 
Pagan  society  in  which  Christianity  had  grown  up. 
That  society  had  found  in  Christianity  a  sort  of 
last  love,  a  rejuvenating  supersensible  hope,  and 
had  bequeathed  to  the  Gospel  of  Eedemption,  for 
its  better  embodiment  and  ornament,  all  its  own 
I 


114  POETRY  AND   EELIGIOK 

wealth  of  art,  philosophy,  and  devotion.  This 
embodiment  of  Christianity  represented  a  civi- 
lization through  which  the  Teutonic  races  had 
not  passed  and  which  they  never  could  have  pro- 
duced; it  appealed  to  a  kind  of  imagination  and 
sentiment  which  was  foreign  to  them.  This  em- 
bodiment, accordingly,  was  the  object  of  their  first 
and -fiercest  attack,  really  because  it  was  unsympar 
thetic  to  their  own  temperament  but  ostensibly 
because  they  could  not  find  its  basis  in  those 
Hebraic  elements  of  Christianity  which  make  up 
the  greater  bulk  of  the  Bible.  They  did  not  value 
the  sublime  aspiration  of  Christianity  to  be  not 
something  Hebraic  or  Teutonic  but  something 
Catholic  and  human ;  and  they  blamed  everything 
which  went  beyond  the  accidental  limits  of  their 
own  sympathies  and  the  narrow  scope  of  their  own 
experience. 

Yet  it  was  only  by  virtue  of  this  complement 
inherited  from  Paganism,  or  at  least  supplied  by 
the  instincts  and  traditions  on  which  Paganism 
had  reposed,  that  Christianity  could  claim  to 
approach  a  humane  universality  or  to  achieve  an 
imaginative  adequacy.  The  problem  was  to  com- 
pose, in  the  form  of  a  cosmic  epic,  with  meta- 
physical justifications  and  effectual  starting-points 
for  moral  action,  the  spiritual  autobiography  of 
man.  The  central  idea  of  this  composition  was 
to  be  the  idea  of  a  Redemption.    Around  this  were 


THE  POETRY   OF   CHRISTIAN   DOGMA      115 

to  be  gathered  and  moulded  together  elements 
drawn  from  Hebrew  tradition  and  scripture,  others 
furnished  by  Paganism,  together  with  all  that  the 
living  imagination  of  the  time  could  create.  Nor 
was  it  right  or  fitting  to  make  a  merely  theoretical 
or  ethical  synthesis.  Doctrine  must  find  its  sen- 
sible echo  in  worship,  in  art,  in  the  feasts  and  fasts 
of  the  year.  Only  when  thus  permeating  life  and 
expressing  itself  to  every  sense  and  faculty  can  a 
religion  be  said  to  have  reached  completion ;  only 
then  has  the  imagination  exhausted  its  means  of 
utterance. 

The  great  success  which  Christianity  achieved  in 
this  immense  undertaking  makes   it,  after   classic 
antiquity,  the  most  important  phase  in  the  history 
of  mankind..    It  is  clear,  however,  that  this  success 
was  not  complete.     That  fallacy  from  which  the 
Pagan  religion  alone  has  been  free,  that  Trpdrov  ij/ev- 
Sos  of  all  fanaticism,  the  natural  but  hopeless  mis- 
understanding of  imagining  that  poetry  in  order  to , 
be  religion,  in  order  to  be  the  inspiration  of  life,> 
must  first  deny  that  it  is   poetry  and  deceive  us\ 
about  the  facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal  —  this  \ 
misunderstanding  has   marred    the   work    of    the/ 
Christian  imagination  and   condemned  it,   if    we 
may    trust    appearances,   to    be   transitory.      For 
by  this  misunderstanding    Christian  doctrine   was 
brought    into  conflict   with  reality,   of    which    it 
pretends  to  prejudge  the  character,  and  also  into 


116  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

conflict  with  what  might  have  been  its  own  ele- 
ments, with  all  excluded  religious  instincts  and 
imaginative  ideals.  Human  life  is  always  essen- 
tially the  same,  and  therefore  a  religion  which,  like 
Christianity,  seizes  the  essence  of  that  life,  ought 
to  be  an  eternal  religion.  But  it  may  forfeit  that 
privilege  by  entangling  itself  with  a  particular 
account  of  matters  of  fact,  matters  irrelevant  to  its 
ideal  significance,  and  further  by  intrenching  Itself, 
by  virtue  of  that  entanglement,  in  an  inadequate 
regimen  or  a  too  narrow  imaginative  development, 
thus  putting  its  ideal  authority  in  jeopardy  by 
opposing  it  to  other  intuitions  and  practices  no 
less  religious  than  its  own. 

Can  Christianity  escape  these  perils  ?  Can  it 
reform  its  claims,  or  can  it  overwhelm  all  op- 
position and  take  the  human  heart  once  more  by 
storm  ?  The  future  alone  can  decide.  The  great- 
est calamity,  however,  would  be  that  which  seems, 
alas !  not  unlikely  to  befall  our  immediate  pos- 
terity, namely,  that  while  Christianity  should  be 
discredited,  no  other  religion,  more  disillusioned 
and  not  less  inspired,  should  come  to  take  its 
place.  Until  the  imagination  should  have  time  to 
recover  and  to  reassert  its  legitimate  and  kindly 
power,  the  European  races  would  then  be  re- 
duced to  confessing  that  while  they  had  mastered 
the  mechanical  forces  of  Nature,  both  by  science 
and  by  the   arts,  they  had   become   incapable   of 


THE  POETRY   OF  CHRISTIAN  DOGMA      117 

mastering  or  understanding  themselves,  and  that, 
bewildered  like  the  beasts  by  the  revolutions  of  the 
heavens  and  by  their  own  irrational  passions,  they 
could  find  no  way  of  uttering  the  ideal  meaning  of 
their  life. 


PLATONIC  LOVE  IN  SOME  ITALIAN 
POETS 

When  the  fruits  of  philosopliic  reflection,  con- 
densed into  some  phrase,  pass  into  the  common 
language  of  men,  there  does  not  and  there  cannot 
accompany  them  any  just  appreciation  of  their 
meaning  or  of  the  long  experience  and  travail  of 
soul  from  which  they  have  arisen.  Few  doctrines 
have  suffered  more  by  popularization  than  the  in- 
tuitions of  Plato.  The  public  sees  in  Platonic 
sayings  little  more  than  phrases  employed  by  un- 
practical minds  to  cloak  the  emptiness  of  their 
yearnings.  Finding  these  fragments  of  an  obso- 
lete speech  put  to  bad  uses,  we  are  apt  to  ignore 
and  despise  them,  much  as  a  modern  peasant  might 
despise  the  fragment  of  a  frieze  or  a  metope  which 
he  found  built  into  his  cottage  wall.  It  is  not 
only  the  works  of  plastic  art  that  moulder  and 
disintegrate  to  furnish  materials  for  the  barbarous 
masons  of  a  later  age :  the  great  edifices  of  reason 
also  crumble,  their  plan  is  lost,  and  their  frag- 
ments, picked  where  they  happen  to  lie,  become 
118 


PLATONIC   LOVE  119 

the  materials  of  a  feebler  thought.  In  common 
speech  we  find  such  bits  of  ancient  wisdom  em- 
bedded; they  prove  the  intelligence  of  some  an- 
cestor of  ours,  but  are  no  evidence  of  our  own. 
When  used  in  ignorance  ci  their  meaning,  they 
become  misplaced  flourishes,  lapses  into  mystery 
in  the  businesslike  plainness  of  our  thought. 
■  Yet  there  is  one  man,  the  archaeologist,  to  whom 
nothing  is  so  interesting  as  just  these  stones  which 
a  practical  builder  would  have  rejected.  He  for- 
gives the  ignorance  and  barbarism  that  placed 
them  wh^re  they  are;  he  is  absorbed  in  studying 
their  sriulptured  surface  and  delighted  if  his  fancy 
can  p'ass  from  them  to  the  idea  of  the  majestic 
whole  to  which  they  once  belonged.  So  in  the 
pr'^sence  of  a  much-abused  philosophic  phrase, 
w;e  may  be  interested  in  reconstructing  the  ex- 
.perience  which  once  gave  it  meaning  and  form. 
^Words  are  at  least  the  tombs  of  ideas,  and  the 
most  conventional  formulas  of  poets  or  theolo- 
gians are  still  good  subjects  for  the  archaeologist 
of  passion.  He  may  find  a  treasure  there;  or  at 
any  rate  he  may  hope  to  be  rewarded  for  his 
labour  by  the  ideal  restoration  of  some  once  beau- 
tiful temple  of  Athena. 

Something  of  this  kind  is  what  we  may  now 
attempt  to  do  with  regard  to  pjoe^Qr  two  Platonic 
ideas,  ideas  which  under  the  often  ironical  title 
of  Platonic   love,  are   constantly  referred  to  and 


120  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

seldom  understood.  These  ideas  may  be  defined 
as  the  transformation  of  the  appreciation  of  beau- 
tiful things  into  the  worship  of  an  ideal  beauty 
and  the  transformation  of  the  love  of  particular 
persons  into  the  love  of  God.  These  mystical 
phrases  may  acquire  a  new  and  more  human 
meaning  if  we  understand,  at  least  in  part,  how 
they  first  came  to  be  spoken.  We  shall  then  not 
think  of  them  merely  as  the  reported  sayings  of 
Plato  or  Plotinus,  Porphyry  or  Proclus ;  we  shall 
not  learn  them  by  rote,  as  the  unhappy  student 
learns  the  enigmas,  which,  in  the  histories  of 
philosophy,  represent  all  that  survives  of  t'^he  doc- 
trine of  a  Thales  or  a  Pythagoras.  We  shall 
have  some  notion  of  the  ideas  that  once  proLQpted 
such  speech. 

And  we  shall  be  the  better  able  to  reconstriiict 
those  conceptions  inasmuch  as  the  reflection  bj 
which  they  are  bred  has  recurred  often  in  the' 
world  —  has  recurred,  very  likely,  in  our  own  ex- 
perience. ■^JVe.are  often  Platonists  without  know- 
ing it.  In  some  form  or  other  Platonic  ideas  occur 
in  all  poetry  of  passion  when  it  is  seasoned  with 
reflection.  They  are  particularly  characteristic  of 
some  Italian  poets,  scattered  from  the  thirteenth 
to  the  sixteenth  centuries.  These  poets  had  souls 
naturally  Platonic;  even  when  they  had  heard 
something  of  Plato  they  borrowed  nothing  from 
him.     They  repeated  his  phrases,  when  they  did 


PLATONIC  LOVE  121 

SO,  merely  to  throw  the  authority  of  an  ancient 
philosopher  over  the  spontaneous  suggestions  of 
their  own  minds.  Their  Platonism  was  all  their 
own :  it  was  Christian,  mediaeval,  and  chivalrous, 
both  in  origin  and  expression.  But  it  was  all  the 
more  genuine  for  being  a  reincarnation  rather 
than  an  imitation  of  the  old  wisdom. 

Nothing,  for  example,  could  be  a  better  object- 
lesson  in  Platonism  than  the  well-known  senti- 
mental history  of  Dante.  There  is  no  essential 
importance  in  the  question  whether  Dante  could 
have  read  anything  of  Plato  or  come  indirectly 
under  his  influence.  The  Platonism  of  Dante,  is, 
in  any  case,  quite  his  own.  It  is  the  expression  of 
his  inner  experience  moulded  by  the  chivalry  and 
theology  of  his  time.  He  tells  us  the  story  him- 
self very  quaintly  in  the  "Vita  Nuova." 

At  the  age  of  nine  he  saw,  at  a  wedding-feast  in 
Florence,  Beatrice,  then  a  child  of  seven,  who  be- 
came, forthwith,  the  mistress  of  his  thoughts.  This 
precocious  passion  ruled  his  imagination  for  life,  so 
that,  when  he  brings  to  an  end  the  account  of  the 
emotions  she  aroused  in  him  by  her  life  and  death, 
he  tells  us  that  he  determined  to  speak  no  more 
about  her  until  he  should  be  able  to  do  so  more 
worthily,  and  to  say  of  her  what  had  never  been  said 
of  any  woman.  In  the  "Divine  Comedy,"  accord- 
ingly,- where  he  fulfils  this  promise,  she  appears 
transfigured  into  a  heavenly  protectress  and  guide, 


/ 


122  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

whose  gentle  womanhood  fades  into  an  imper- 
sonation of  theological  wisdom.  (But  this  life- 
long devotion  of  Dante  to  Beatrice  was  something 
purely  mental  and  poetical;  he  never  ventured  to 
woo ;  he  never  once  descended  or  sought  to  descend 
from  the  sphere  of  silent  and  distant  adoration; 
his  tenderness  remained  always  tearful  and  dreamy, 
like  that  of  a  supersensitive  child."^ 

Yet,  while  his  love  of  Beatrice  was  thus  constant 
and  religious,  it  was  by  no  means  exclusive.  Dante 
took  a  wife  as  Beatrice  herself  had  taken  a  husband ; 
the  temptations  of  youth,  as  well  as  the  affection  of 
married  life,  seem  to  have  existed  beneath  this  ideal 
love,  not  unrebuked  by  it,  indeed,  but  certainly  not 
disturbing  it.  Should  we  be  surprised  at  this 
species  of  infidelity  ?  Should  we  regard  it  as  proof 
of  the  artificiality  and  hollowness  of  that  so  tran- 
scendental passion,  and  smile,  as  people  have  done 
in  the  case  of  Plato  himseK,  at  the  thin  disguise  of 
philosophy  that  covers  the  most  vulgar  frailties  of 
human  nature?  Or,  should  we  say,  with  others, 
that  Beatrice  is  a  merely  allegorical  figure,  and  the 
love  she  is  said  to  inspire  nothing  but  a  symbol  for 
attachment  to  wisdom  and  virtue  ?  These  are  old 
questions,  and  insoluble  by  any  positive  method, 
since  they  cannot  be  answered  by  the  facts  but  only 
by  our  interpretation  of  them.  Our  solution  can 
have  little  historical  value,  but  it  will  serve  to  test 
our  understanding  of  the  metaphysics  of  feeling. 


PLATONIC  LOVE  123 

To  guide  us  in  this  delicate  business  we  may 
appeal  to  a  friend  of  Dante,  his  fellow-poet  Guido 
Cavalcanti,  who  will  furnish  us  with  another  ex- 
ample of  this  same  sort  of  idealization,  and  this 
same  sort  of  inconstancy,  expressed  in  a  manner 
that  will  repay  analysis.  Guido  Cavalcanti  had  a 
Beatrice  of  his  own  —  something  of  the  kind  was 
then  expected  of  every  gentle  knight  and  poet  — 
and  Guido's  Beatrice  was  called  Giovanna.  Dante 
seems  to  acknowledge  the  parity  of  his  friend's 
passion  with  his  own  by  coupling  the  names  of  the 
two  ladies,  Monna  Vanna  and  Monna  Bice,  in  one 
or  two  of  the  sonnets  he  addresses  to  Guido.  Now 
it  came  to  pass  that  Guido,  in  the  fervour  of  his 
devotion,  at  once  chivalrous  and  religious,  bethought 
him  of  making  a  pilgrimage  to  the  tomb  of  Saint 
James  the  Apostle,  at  Compostela  in  Spain.  Upon 
this  journey  —  a  journey  beguiled,  no  doubt,  by 
thoughts  of  the  beautiful  Giovanna  he  had  left  in 
Florence  —  he  halted  in  the  city  of  Toulouse.  But 
at  Toulouse,  as  chance  would  have  it,  there  lived 
a  lovely  lady  by  the  name  of  Mandetta,  with  whom 
it  was  impossible  for  the  chivalrous  pilgrim  not  to 
fall  in  love ;  for  chivalry  is  nothing  but  a  fine  em- 
blazoning of  the  original  manly  impulse  to  fighy 
every  man  and  love  every  woman.  Now  in  an 
interesting  sonnet  Guido  describes  the  conflict  of 
these  two  affections,  or  perhaps  we  should  rather 
say,  their  union. 


124  POETEY   AND   RELIGION 

**  There  is  a  lady  in  Toulouse  so  fair, 

So  young,  so  gentle,  and  so  chastely  gay, 
She  doth  a  true  and  living  likeness  bear 
In  her  sweet  eyes  to  Love,  whom  I  obey." 

The  word  I  have,  to  avoid  confusion,  here  ren- 
dered by  "  Love  "  is  in  the  original  "  la  Donna  mia," 
"  my  Lady '' ;  so  that  we  have  onr  poet  falling  in 
love  with  Mandetta  on  account  of  her  striking  re- 
semblance to  Giovanna.  Is  this  inconstancy  or 
only  a  more  delicate  and  indirect  homage?  We 
shall  see  ;  for  Guido  goes  on  to  represent  his  soul, 
according  to  his  custom,  as  a  being  that  dwells  and 
moves  about  in  the  chambers  of  his  heart;  and 
speaking  still  of  Mandetta,  the  lady  of  Toulouse, 
he  continues :  — 

•'  Within  my  heart  my  soul,  when  she  appeared, 
Was  filled  with  longing  and  was  fain  to  flee 

Out  of  my  heart  to  her,  yet  was  afeared 
To  tell  the  lady  who  my  Love  might  be. 

She  looked  upon  me  with  her  quiet  eyes, 
And  under  their  sweet  ray  my  bosom  burned, 

Cheered  by  Love's  image,  that  within  them  lies.'* 

So  far  we  have  still  the  familiar  visible  in  the 
new  and  making  its  power;  Mandetta  is  still 
nothing  but  a  stimulus  to  reawaken  the  memory 
of  Giovanna.  But  before  the  end  there  is  trouble. 
The  sting  of  the  present  attraction  is  felt  in  contrast 
to  the  eternal  ideal.  There  is  a  necessity  of  sac- 
rifice, and  he  cries^  as  the  lady  turns  away  her 
eyes :  — 


PLATONIC   LOVE  125 

*' Alas  !  they  shot  an  arrow  as  she  turned, 
And  with  a  death-wound  from  the  piercing  dart 
My  soul  came  sighing  back  into  my  heart." 

Perhaps  this  merely  means  that  the  lady  was 
disdainful ;  had  she  been  otherwise  the  poet  might 
never  have  written  sonnets  about  her,  and  surely 
not  sonnets  in  which  her  charms  were  reduced  to 
a  Platonic  reminiscence  of  a  fairer  ideal.  But  it  is 
this  turning  away  of  the  face  of  love,  this  ephemeral 
quality  of  its  embodiments,  that  usually  stimulates 
the  imagination  to  the  construction  of  a  super- 
sensible ideal  in  which  all  those  evaporated  im- 
pulses may  meet  again  and  rest  in  an  adequate  and 
permanent  object.  So  that  while  Guido's  "  death- 
wound"  was  perhaps  in  reality  nothing  but  the 
rebuff  offered  him  by  a  prospective  mistress,  yet 
the  sting  of  it,  in  a  mind  of  Platonic  habit,  served 
at  once  to  enforce  the  distinction  between  the 
ideal  beauty,  so  full  of  sweetness  and  heavenly 
charm,  which  had  tempted  the  soul  out  of  his 
heart  on  its  brief  adventure,  and  the  particular 
and  real  object  against  which  the  soul  was  dashed, 
and  from  which  it  returned  bruised  and  troubled  to 
its  inward  solitude. 

So  the  meditative  Guido  represents  his  experi- 
ence: a  new  planet  swam  into  his  ken  radiant 
with  every  grace  and  virtue;  yet  all  the  magic 
of  that  lady  lay  in  her  resemblance  to  the  mysteri- 
ous Giovanna,  the  double   of   Beatrice,   the   ideal 


'j 


126  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

of  the  poet's  imagination.  The  soul,  at  first,  went 
out  eagerly  to  the  new  love  as  to  an  image  and 
embodiment  of  the  old,  but  was  afraid,  and  justly, 
to  mention  the  ideal  in  the  presence  of  the  reality. 
There  is  always  danger  in  doing  that;  it  breaks 
the  spell  and  reduces  us  again  to  the  old  and 
patient  loyalty  to  the  unseen.  The  present  thing 
being  so  like  the  ideal  we  unhesitatingly  pursue  it : 
but  we  are  quickly  disappointed,  and  the  soul  re- 
turns sighing  and  mortally  wounded,  as  the  new 
object  of  passion  fades  away. 

We  may  now  understand  somewhat  better  that 
strange  combination  of  loyalty  and  disloyalty  which 
we  find  in  Dante.  While  the  object  of  love  is  any 
particular  thing,  it  excludes  all  others ;  but  it  in- 
cludes all  others  as  soon  as  it  becomes  a  general 
ideal.  All  beauties  attract  by  suggesting  the  ideal 
and  then  fail  to  satisfy  by  not  fulfilling  it.  While 
Giovanna  remained  a  woman,  Guido,  as  his  after 
life  plainly  showed,  had  no  difficulty  in  forgetting 
her  and  in  loving  many  others  with  a  frank  heart ; 
but  when  Giovanna  had  become  a  name  for  the  ab- 
solute ideal,  that  sovereign  mistress  could  never  be 
forgotten,  and  the  thought  of  her  subordinated  every 
particular  attachment  and  called  the  soul  away  from 
it.  Compared  with  the  ideal,  every  human  perfec- 
tion becomes  a  shadow  and  a  deceit ;  every  mortal 
passion  leaves,  as  Keats  has  told  us, 

"  A  heart  high-sorrowful  and  cloyed, 
A  burning  forehead  and  a  parching  tongue." 


PLATONIC   LOVE  127 

Such  is  the  nature  of  idealization.  Like  the 
Venus  'of  Apelles,  in  which  all  known  beauties 
were  combined,  the  ideal  is  the  union  of  all  we 
prize  in  all  creatures ;  and  the  mind  that  has  once 
felt  the  irresistible  compulsion  to  create  this  ideal, 
and  to  believe  in  it  has  become  incapable  of  unre- 
served love  of  anything  else.  The  absolute  is  a 
jealous  god ;  it  is  a  consuming  fire  that  blasts  the 
affections  upon  which  it  feeds.  For  this  reason 
the  soul  of  Guido,  in  his  sonnet,  is  mortally 
wounded  by  the  shaft  of  that  beauty  which  has 
awakened  a  vehement  longing  for  perfection  with- 
out being  able  to  satisfy  it.  All  things  become  to 
the  worshipper  of  the  ideal  so  many  signs  and 
symbols  of  what  he  seeks;  like  the  votary  who, 
kneeling  now  before  one  image  and  now  before 
another,  lets  his  incense  float  by  all  with  a  certain 
abstracted  impartiality,  because  his  aspiration 
mounts  through  them  equally  to  the  invisible  God 
they  alike  represent. 

Another  aspect  of  the  same  process  is  well  de- 
scribed by  Shakespeare,  in  whom  Italian  influences 
count  for  much,  when  he  says  to  the  person  he  has 
chosen  as  the  object  of  his  idealization :  — 

"  Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts 

Which  I,  by  lacking,  have  supposed  dead, 

And  there  reigns  love  and  all  love's  loving  parts 
And  all  those  friends  which  I  thought  buried. 

How  many  a  holy  and  obsequious  tear 
Hath  dear  religious  love  stolen  from  mine  eye 


128  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

As  interest  for  the  dead,  which  now  appear 
But  things  removed,  which  hidden  in  thee  lie. 

Thou  art  the  grave  where  buried  love  doth  live 
Hung  with  the  trophies  of  my  lovers  gone, 

Who  all  their  parts  of  me  to  thee  did  give  : 
That  due  of  many  now  is  thine  alone. 

Their  images  I  loved  I  view  in  thee, 

And  thou,  all  they,  hast  all  the  all  of  me." 

We  need  not,  then,  waste  erudition  in  trying  to 
prove  whether  Dante's  Beatrice  or  Guido's  Gio- 
vanna  or  any  one  else  who  has  been  the  subject 
of  the  greater  poetry  of  love,  was  a  symbol  or  a 
reality.  To  poets  and  philosophers  real  things 
are  themselves  symbols.  The  child  of  seven 
whom  Dante  saw  at  the  Florentine  feast  was,  if 
you  will,  a  reality.  As  such  she  is  profoundly 
unimportant.  To  say  that  Dante  loved  her  then 
and  ever  after  is  another  way  of  saying  that  she 
was  a  symbol  to  him.  That  is  the  way  with  child- 
ish loves.  Neither  the  conscious  spell  of  the 
senses  nor  the  affinities  of  taste  and  character 
can  then  be  powerful,  but  the  sense  of  loneliness 
and  the  vague  need  of  loving  may  easily  conspire 
with  the  innocence  of  the  eyes  to  fix  upon  a 
single  image  and  to  make  it  the  imaginary  goal 
of  all  those  instincts  which  as  yet  do  not  know 
themselves. 

When  with  time  these  instincts  become  explicit 
and  select  their  respective  objects,  if  the  inmost 
heart   still  remains   unsatisfied,  as  it  must  in  all 


PLATONIC   LOVE  129 

profound  or  imaginative  natures,  the  name  and 
memory  of  that  vague  early  love  may  well  sub- 
sist as  a  symbol  for  the  perfect  good  yet  unat- 
tained.  It  is  intelligible  that  as  time  goes  on 
that  image,  grown  thus  consciously  symbolic, 
should  become  interchangeable  with  the  abstract 
method  of  pursuing  perfection  —  that  Beatrice, 
that  is,  should  become  the  same  as  sacred  the- 
ology. Having  recognized  that  she  was  to  his 
childish  fancy  what  the  ideals  of  religion  were  to 
his  mature  imagination,  Dante  intentionally  fused 
the  two,  as  every  poet  intentionally  fuses  the 
general  and  the  particular,  the  universal  and  the 
personal.  Beatrice  thenceforth  appeared,  as  Plato 
wished  that  our  loves  should,  as  a  manifestation 
of  absolute  beauty  and  as  an  avenue  of  divine 
grace.  Dante  merely  added  his  Christian  humil- 
ity and  tenderness  to  the  insight  of  the  Pagan 
philosopher. 

/  The  tendency  to  impersonality,  we  see,  is  essen- 
tial to  the  ideal.  It  tSDuld  not  fulfil  its  functions 
if  it  retained  too  many  of  the  traits  of  any  in- 
dividual. A  blind  love,  an  unreasoning  passion, 
is  therefore  inconsistent  with  the  Platonic  spirit, 
which  is  favourable  rather  to  abstraction  from  per- 
sons and  to  q/lTrrvpaj^f^^  f)f  ^nalif^PQ  Thcsc  may, 
of  course,  b^'mund  in  many  individuals.  Too 
much  subjection  to  another  personality  makes  the 
expression   of  our  own  impossible,  and  the  ideal 


130  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

is  nothing  but  a  projection  of  the  demands  of 
our  imagination.  If  the  imagination  is  over- 
powered by  too  strong  a  fascination,  by  the  abso- 
lute dominion  of  an  alien  influence,  we  form  no 
ideal  at  all.  We  must  master  a  passion  before 
we  can  see  its  meaning. 

For  this  reason,  among  others,  we  find  so  little 
Platonism  in  that  poet  in  whom  we  might  have 
expected  to  find  most  —  I  mean  in  Petrarch.  Pe- 
trarch is  musical,  ingenious,  learned,  and  passion- 
ate, but  he  is  weak.  His  art  is  greater  than  his 
thought.  In  the  quality  of  his  mind  there  is 
nothing  truly  distinguished.  The  discipline  of 
his  long  and  hopeless  love  brings  him  little  wis- 
dom, little  consolation.  He  is  lachrymose  and 
sentimental  at  the  end  as  at  the  beginning,  and 
his  best  dream  of  heaven,  expressed,  it  is  true,  in 
entrancing  verse,  is  only  to  hold  his  lady's  hand 
and  hear  her  voice.  Sometimes,  indeed,  he  re- 
peats what  he  must  have  read  and  heard  so  often, 
and  gives  us  his  version  of  Plato  in  half  a  son- 
net. Thus,  for  instance,  speaking  of  his  love  for 
Laura,  he  says  in  one  place :  — 


Hence  comes  the  understanding  of  love's  scope 
That  seeking  her  to  perfect  good  aspires, 
Accounting  little  what  all  flesh  desires ; 
And  hence  the  spirit's  happy  pinions  ope 
In  flight  impetuous  to  the  heaven's  choirs, 
Wherefore  I  walk  already  proud  in  hope." 


PLATONIC   LOVE  131 

If  we  are  looking,  however,  for  more  direct 
expressions  of  the  idealism  of  feeling,  of  love, 
and  the  sense  of  beauty  passing  into  religion,  we 
shall  do  well  to  turn  to  another  Italian,  not  so 
great  a  poet  as  Petrarch  by  any  means,  but  a  far 
greater  man  —  to  Michael  Angelo.  Michael  Angelo 
justly  regarded  himself  as  essentially  a  sculptor, 
and  said  even  of  painting  that  it  was  not  his  art ; 
his  verses  are  therefore  both  laboured  and  rough. 
Yet  they  have  been  too  much  neglected,  for  they 
breathe  the  same  pathos  of  .strength,  the  same 
agony  in  hope,  as  his  Titanic  designs. 

Like  every  Italian  of  culture  in  those  days, 
Michael  Angelo  was  in  the  habit  of  addressing 
little  pieces  to  his  friends,  and  of  casting  his 
thoughts  or  his  prayers  into  the  mould  of  a  son- 
net or  a  madrigal.  Verse  has  a  greater  natural- 
ness and  a  wider  range  among  the  Latin  peoples 
than  among  the  English;  poetry  and  prose  are 
less  differentiated.  In  French,  Italian,  and  Span- 
ish, as  in  Latin  itself,  elegance  and  neatness  of 
expression  sufiB.ce  for  verse.  The  reader  passes 
without  any  sense  of  incongruity  or  anti-climax 
from  passion  to  reflection,  from  sentiment  to  satire, 
from  flights  of  fancy  to  homely  details :  the  whole 
has  a  certain  human  sincerity  and  intelligibility 
which  weld  it  together.  As  the  Latin  languages 
are  not  composed  of  two  diverse  elements,  as 
English   is   of  Latin  and   German,  so  the   Latin 


132  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

mind  does  not  have  two  spheres  of  sentiment,  one 
vulgar  and  the  other  sublime.  All  changes  are 
variations  on  a  single  key,  which  is  the  key  of 
intelligence.  We  must  not  be  surprised,  therefore, 
to  find  now  a  message  to  a  friend,  now  an  artistic 
maxim,  now  a  bit  of  dialectic,  and  now  a  confes- 
sion of  sin,  taking  the  form  of  verse  and  filling  out 
the  fourteen  lines  of  a  sonnet.  On  the  contrary, 
we  must  look  to  these  familiar  compositions  for 
the  most  genuine  evidence  of  a  man's  daily 
thoughts. 

We  find  in  Michael  Angelo's  poems  a  few  recur- 
ring ideas,  or  rather  the  varied  expression  of  a 
single  half  aesthetic,  half  religious  creed.  The 
soul,  he  tells  us  in  effect,  is  by  nature  made  for 
God  and  for  the  enjoyment  of  divine  beauty.  All 
true  beauty  leads  to  the  idea  of  perfection;  the 
effort  toward  perfection  is  the  burden  of  all  art, 
which  labours,  therefore,  with  a  superhuman  and 
insoluble  problem.  CAllJLax^e,  also,  that  does  not  lead 
to  the  love  of  God  and  merge  into  that  love,  is  a 
long  and  hopeless  tormenT^)  while  the  light  of  love 
is  already  the  light  of^Ti^ven,  the  fire  of  love  is 
already  the  fire  of  hell.  These  are  the  thoughts 
that  perpetually  recur,  varied  now  with  a  pathetic 
reference  to  the  poet's  weariness  and  old  age,  now 
with  an  almost  despairing  appeal  for  divine  mercy, 
often  with  a  powerful  and  rugged  description  of 
the  pangs  of  love,  and  with  a  pious  acceptance  of 


PLATONIC  LOVE  133 

its  discipline.  The  whole  is  intense,  exalted,  and 
tragic,  haunted  by  something  of  that  profound 
terror,  of  that  magnificent  strength,  which  we 
admire  in  the  figures  of  the  Sixtine  Chapel,  those 
noble  agonies  of  beings  greater  than  any  we  find 
in  this  world. 

What,  we  may  ask,  is  all  this  tragedy  about? 
What  great  sorrow,  what  great  love,  had  Michael 
Angelo  or  his  giants  that  they  writhe  so  supernat- 
urally  ?  As  those  decorative  youths  are  sprinkled 
over  the  Sixtine  vault,  filled,  we  know  not  why, 
with  we  know  not  what  emotion,  so  these  scraps 
of  verse,  these  sibylline  leaves  of  Michael  Angelo's, 
give  us  no  reason  for  their  passion.  They  tell  no 
story ;  there  seems  to  have  been  no  story  to  tell. 
There  is  something  impersonal  and  elusive  about 
the  subject  and  occasion  of  these  poems.  Attempts 
have  been  made  to  attribute  them  to  discreditable 
passions,  as  also  to  a  sentimental  love  for  Vittoria 
Colonna.  But  the  friendship  with  Vittoria  Colonna 
was  an  incident  of  Michael  Angelo's  mature  years ; 
some  of  the  sonnets  and  madrigals  are  addressed 
to  her,  but  we  cannot  attribute  to  her  influence 
the  passion  and  sorrow  that  seem  to  permeate 
them  all. 

Perhaps  there  is  less  mystery  in  this  than  the 
curious  would  have  us  see  in  it.  Perhaps  the  love 
and  beauty,  however  base  their  primal  incarnation, 
are  really,  as  they  think  themselves,  aspirations 


184  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

toward  the  Most  High.  In  the  long  studies  and 
weary  journeys  of  the  artist,  in  his  mighty  inspira- 
tion, in  his  intense  love  of  the  structural  beauty  of 
the  human  body,  in  his  vicissitudes  of  fortune  and 
his  artistic  disappointments,  in  his  exalted  piety, 
we  may  see  quite  enough  explanation  for  the  burden 
of  his  soul.  It  is  not  necessary  to  find  vulgar 
causes  for  the  extraordinary  feelings  of  an  extraor- 
dinary man.  It  suffices  that  life  wore  this  aspect 
to  him;  that  the  great  demands  of  his  spirit  so 
expressed  themselves  in  the  presence  of  his  world. 
Here  is  a  madrigal  in  which  the  Platonic  theory 
of  beauty  is  clearly  stated :  — 

"  For  faithful  guide  unto  my  labouring  heart 
Beauty  was  given  me  at  birth, 
To  be  my  glass  and  lamp  in  either  art. 
Who  thinketh  otherwise  inisknows  her  worth, 
For  highest  beauty  only  gives  me  light 
To  carve  and  paint  aright. 
Rash  is  the  thought  and  vain 
That  maketh  beauty  from  the  senses  grow. 
She  lifts  to  heaven  hearts  that  truly  know, 
But  eyes  grown  dim  with  pain 
From  mortal  to  immortal  cannot  go 
Nor  without  grace  of  God  look  up  again." 

And  here  is  a  sonnet,  called  by  Mr.  Symonds 
"  the  heavenly  birth  of  love  and  beauty."  I  bor- 
row in  part  from  his  translation :  — 

'*  My  love's  life  comes  not  from  this  heart  of  mine. 
The  love  wherewith  I  love  thee  hath  no  heart, 


PLATONIC   LOVE  136 

Turned  thither  whither  no  fell  thoughts  incline 
And  erring  human  passion  leaves  no  smart. 
yLoye,  from  God's  bosom  when  our  souls  did  part, 
Made  me  pure  eye  to  see,  thee  light  to  shine, 
And  I  must  needs,  half  mortal  though  thou  art, 
In  spite  of  sorrow  know  thee  all  divine. 
As  heat  in  fire,  so  must  eternity 
In  beauty  dwell ;/ through  thee  my  soul's  endeavour 
Mounts  to  the  pattern  and  the  source  of  thee ;. 
And  having  found  all  heaven  in  thine  eyes, 
Beneath  thy  brows  my  burning  spirit  flies 
There  where  I  loved  thee  first  to  dwell  for  ever." 

Sometliing  of  this  kind,  may  also  be  found  in 
the  verses  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  who,  like  Michael 
Angelo,  was  a  poet  only  incidentally,  and  even 
thought  it  necessary  to  apologize  in  a  preface  for 
having  written  about  love.  Many  of  his  composi- 
tions are,  indeed,  trival  enough,  but  his  pipings 
will  not  seem  vain  to  the  severest  philosopher 
when  he  finds  them  leading  to  strains  like  the 
following,  where  the  thought  rises  to  the  purest 
sphere  of  tragedy  and  of  religion :  — 

"  As  a  lamp,  burning  through  the  waning  night, 
When  the  oil  begins  to  fail  that  fed  its  fire 
Flares  up,  and  in  its  dying  waxes  bright 
And  mounts  and  spreads,  the  better  to  expire ; 
So  in  this  pilgrimage  and  earthly  flight 
The  ancient  hope  is  spent  that  fed  desire. 
And  if  there  burn  within  a  greater  light 
'  Tis  that  the  vigil's  end  approacheth  nigher. 
Hence  thy  last  insult.  Fortune,  cannot  move, 
Nor  death's  inverted  torches  give  alarm ; 


136  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

I  see  the  end  of  wrath  and  bitter  moan. 
My  fair  Medusa  into  sculptured  stone 
Turns  me  no  more,  my  Siren  cannot  charm. 
Heaven  draws  me  up  to  its  supernal  love." 

From  sucli  spontaneous  meditation  Lorenzo  could 
even  pass  to  verses  ofl&cially  religious ;  but  in  them 
too,  beneath  the  threadbare  metaphors  of  the  pious 
muse  and  her  mystical  paradoxes,  we  may  still 
feel  the  austerity  and  firmness  of  reason.  The 
following  stanzas,  for  instance,  taken  from  his 
"  Laudi  Spirituali,"  assume  a  sublime  meaning  if  we 
remember  that  the  essence  to  which  they  are  ad- 
dressed, before  being  a  celestial  Monarch  into 
whose  visible  presence  any  accident  might  usher 
us,  was  a  general  idea  of  what  is  good  and  an  in- 
transitive rational  energy,  indistinguishable  from 
the  truth  of  things. 

"  0  let  this  wretched  life  within  me  die 

That  I  may  live  in  thee,  my  life  indeed  ; 
In  thee  alone,  where  dwells  eternity, 

While  hungry  multitudes  death's  hunger  feed. 
I  list  within,  and  hark  I  Death's  stealthy  tread  I 
I  look  to  thee,  and  nothing  then  is  dead. 

"  Then  eyes  may  see  a  light  invisible 

And  ears  may  hear  a  voice  without  a  sound,  — 

A  voice  and  light  not  harsh,  but  tempered  well, 
Which  the  mind  wakens  when  the  sense  is  drowned, 

Till,  wrapped  within  herself,  the  soul  have  flown 

To  that  last  good  which  is  her  inmost  own. 

*'  When,  sweet  and  beauteous  Master,  on  that  day. 
Reviewing  all  my  loves  with  aching  heart, 


PLATONIC   LOVE  137 

I  take  from  each  its  bitter  self  away, 
The  remnant  shall  be  thou,  their  better  part. 
This  perfect  sweetness  be  his  single  store 
Who  seeks  the  good ;  this  f aileth  nevermore. 

"  A  thirst  unquenchable  is  not  beguiled 

By  draught  on  draught  of  any  running  river 
Whose  fiery  waters  feed  our  pangs  for  ever, 

But  by  a  living  fountain  undetiled. 
O  sacred  well,  I  seek  thee  and  were  fain 
To  drink  ;  so  should  I  never  thirst  again." 

Having  before  us  these  characteristic  expressions 
of  Platonic  feeling,  as  it  arose  again  in  a  Christian 
age,  divorced  from  the  accidental  setting  which 
Greek  manners  had  given  it,  we  may  be  better  able 
to  understand  its  essence.  It  is  nothing  else  thanf 
the  application  to  passion  of  that  pursuit  of  somei 
thing  permanent  in  a  world  of  change,  of  something! 
absolute  in  a  world  of  relativity,  which  was  thel 
essence  of  the  Platonic  philosophy.  If  we  may 
give  rein  to  the  imagination  in  a  matter  which 
without  imagination  could  not  be  understood  at  all, 
we  may  fancy  Plato  trying  to  comprehend  the 
power  which  beauty  exerted  over  his  senses  by 
applying  to  the  objects  of  love  that  profound  met- 
aphysical distinction  which  he  had  learned  to  make 
in  his  dialectical  studies  —  the  distinction  between 
the  appearance  to  sense  and  the  reality  envisaged 
by  the  intellect,  between  the  phenomenon  and  the 
ideal.  The  whole  natural  world  had  come  to  seem 
to  him  like  a  world  of  dreams.     In  dreams  images 


138  POETRY    AND    RELIGION 

succeed  one  another  without  other  meaning  than 
that  which  they  derive  from  our  strange  power  of 
recognition  —  a  power  which  enables  us  somehow, 
among  the  most  incongruous  transformations  and 
surroundings,  to  find  again  the  objects  of  our  wak- 
ing life,  and  to  name  those  absurd  and  unmannerly 
visions  by  the  name  of  father  or  mother  or  by  any 
other  familiar  name.  As  these  resemblances  to 
real  things  make  up  all  the  truth  of  our  dream,  and 
these  recognitions  all  its  meaning,  so  Plato  thought 
that  all  the  truth  and  meaning  of  earthly  things 
was  the  reference  they  contained  to  a  heavenly  , 
original.  This  heavenly  original  we  remember  andx 
recognize  even  among  the  distortions,  disappear- 
ances, and  multiplications  of  its  earthly  copies. 

This  thought  is  easily  applicable  to  the  affec- 
tions ;  indeed,  it  is  not  impossible  that  it  was  the 
natural  transcendence  of  any  deep  glance  into 
beauty,  and  the  lessons  in  disillusion  and  idealism 
given  by  that  natural  metaphysician  we  call  love, 
that  first  gave  Plato  the  key  to  his  general  system. 
There  is,  at  any  rate,  no  sphere  in  which  the  super- 
sensible is  approached  with  so  warm  a  feeling  of 
its  reality,  in  which  the  phenomenon  is  so  trans- 
parent and  so  indifferent  a  symbol  of  something 
perfect  and  divine  beyond.  In  love  and  beauty,  if 
anywhere,  even  the  common  man  thinks  he  has 
visitations  from  a  better  world,  approaches  to  a 
lost  happiness ;  a  happiness  never  tasted  by  us  in 


PLATONIC   LOVE  139 

this  world,  and  yet  so  natural,  so  expected,  that 
we  look  for  it  at  every  turn  of  a  corner,  in  every 
new  face ;  we  look  for  it  with  so  much  confidence, 
with  so  much  depth  of  expectation,  that  we  never 
quite  overcome  our  disappointment  that  it  is  not 
found. 

And  it  is  not  found,  —  no,  never,  —  in  spite  of 
what  we  may  think  when  we  are  first  in  love. 
Plato  knew  this  well  from  his  experience.  He 
had  had  successful  loves,  or  what  the  world  calls 
such,  but  he  could  not  fancy  that  these  successes 
were  more  than  provocations,  more  than  hints  of 
what  the  true  good  is.  To  have  mistaken  them  for 
real  happiness  would  have  been  to  continue  to 
dream.  It  would  have  shown  as  little  compre- 
hension of  the  hearths  experience  as  the  idiot  shows 
of  the  experience  of  the  senses  when  he  is  unable 
to  put  together  impressions  of  his  eyes  and  hands 
and  to  say,  "Here  is  a  table;  here  is  a  stool."  It 
is  by  a  parallel  use  of  the  understanding  that  we 
put  together  the  impressions  of  the  heart  and  the 
imagination  and  are  able  to  say,  "Here  is  abso- 
lute beauty :  here  is  God."  The  impressions  them- 
selves have  no  permanence,  no  intelligible  essence. 
As  Plato  said,  they  are  never  anything  fixed  but 
are  always  either  becoming  or  ceasing  to  be  what 
we  think  them.  There  must  be,  he  tells  us,  an 
eternal  and  clearly  definable  object  of  which  the 
visible   appearances   to  us  are  the   manifold  sem- 


140  POETRY   AND  RELIGION  d 

blance;  now  by^*ane  trait  now  by  another  *the 
phantom  before  us  lights  up  that  vague  and  haunt- 
ing idea,  and  makes  us  utter  its  name  with  a  mo- 
mentary sense  of  certitude  and  attainment,     y 

Just  so  the  individual  beauties  that  charm^our" 
attention  and  enchain  the  soul  have  only  a  transi- 
tive existence;  they  are  mom«!rt;ary  visions,  irre- 
coverable moods.   Their  object  i^nstable;  we  never, 
can  say  what  it  is,  it  changes  so  quickly  befor§  our 
eyes.     What  is  it  that  a  mother  loves  in  her  child  ? 
Perhaps  the  babe  nqt..yet  born,  or  the  babe  that 
grew  long  ago  by  her  suffering  and  unrecognized' 
care ;  perhaps  the  man  to  be  or  the  youth  thalf  has     I 
been.     What  does  a  man  love  in  a  woman  ?    The    \ 
girl   that  is   yet,  ^rhaps,   to   be  his,   or  the  wife    >. 
that  once  chose  to  give  him  her  whole  existeftCe.  . 
Where,  among  all  these  glimpses,  is  the  true  objedl^  ^ 
of  love?     It  flies  before  us,  it  tempts  us  on,  only 
to  escape  and  turn  to  mock  us  from  a  new  quarter. 
And  yet  nothing  can  concern  us  more  or  be  more 
real  to  us   than  this   mysterious   good,   since   the 
pursuit  of  it  gives  our  lives  whatever  they  have 
of  true  earnestness  and  meaning,  and  the  approach 
to  it  whatever  they  have  of  joy. 

So  far  is  this  ideal,  Plato  would  say,  from  being 
an  illusion,  that  it  is  the  source  of  the  world,  the 
power  that  keeps  us  in  existence.  But  for  it,  we 
should  be  dead.  A  profound  indifference,  an  ini- 
tial torpor,  would  have  kept  us  from  ever  opening 


PLATONIC  LOVE  141 

our  eyes,  and  we  should  have  no  world  of  business 
or  pleasure,  politics  or  science,  to  think  about  at 
all.  We,  and  the  whole  universe,  exist  only  by 
the  passionate  attempt  to  return  to  our  perfection, 
by  the  radical  need  of  losing  ourselves  again  in 
God.  That  ineffable  good  is  our  natural  posses- 
sion ;  all  we  honour  in  this  life  is  but  the  partial 
recovery  of  our  birthright ;  every  delightful  thing 
is  like  a  rift  in  the  clouds  through  which  we  catch 
a  glimpse  of  our  native  heaven.  If  that  heaven 
seems  so  far  away  and  the  idea  of  it  so  dim  and 
unreal,  it  is  because  we  are  so  far  from  perfect,  so 
much  immersed  in  what  is  alien  and  destructive  to 
the  soul. 

Thus  the  history  of  our  loves  is  the  record  of 
our  divine  conversations,  of  our  intercourse  with 
heaven.  It  matters  very  little  whether  this  his- 
tory seems  to  us  tragic  or  not.  In  one  sense,  all 
mortal  loves  are  tragic  because  never  is  the  crea- 
ture we  think  we  possess  the  true  and  final  object 
of  our  love ;  this  love  must  ultimately  pass  beyond 
that  particular  apparition,  which  is  itself  continu- 
ally passing  away  and  shifting  all  its  lines  and 
colours.  As  Heraclitus  could  never  bathe  twice  in 
the  same  river,  because  its  water  had  flowed  away, 
so  Plato  could  never  look  twice  at  the  same  face, 
for  it  had  become  another.  But  on  the  other  hand 
the  most  unsuccessful  passion  cannot  be  a  vain 
thing.      More,  perhaps,  than  if   it  had   found  an 


142  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

apparent  satisfaction,  it  will  reveal  to  us  an  ob- 
ject of  infinite  worth,  and  the  flight  of  the  soul, 
detached  by  it  from  the  illusions  of  common  life, 
will  be  more  straight  and  steady  toward  the  ulti- 
mate good. 

Such,  if  we  are  not  mistaken,  is  the  lesson  of 
Plato's  experience  and  also  of  that  of  the  Italian 
poets  whom  we  have  quoted.  Is  this  experience 
something  normal?  Is  it  the  rational  outcome  of 
our  own  lives  ?  That  is  a  question  which  each 
man  must  answer  for  himself.  Our  immediate 
object  will  have  been  attained  if  we  have  made 
more  intelligible  a  tendency  which  is  certainly 
very  common  among  men,  and  not  among  the  men 
least  worthy  of  honour.  It  is  the  tendency  to 
make  our  experience  of  love  rational,  as  scientific 
thinking  is  a  tendency  to  make  rational  our  experi- 
ence of  the  outer  world.  The  theories  of  natural 
science  are  creations  of  human  reason ;  they  change 
with  the  growth  of  reason,  and  express  the  intel- 
lectual impulses  of  each  nation  and  age.  Theories 
about  the  highest  good  do  the  same;  only  being 
less  applicable  in  practice,  less  controllable  by  ex- 
periment, they  seldom  attain  the  same  distinctness 
and  articulation.  But  there  is  nothing  authorita- 
tive in  those  constructions,  of  the  intellect,  nothing 
coercive  except  in  so  far  as  our  own  experience  and 
reflection  force  us  to  accept  them.  Natural  science 
is  persuasive   because  it  embodies  the  momentum 


PLATONIC   LOVE  143 

of  common  sense  and  of  the  practical  arts;  it 
carries  on  their  spontaneous  processes  by  more 
refined  but  essentially  similar  methods.  Moral 
science  is  persuasive  under  the  same  conditions, 
but  these  conditions  are  not  so  generally  found 
in  the  minds  of  men.  Their  conscience  is  often 
superstitious  and  perfunctory;  their  imagination 
is  usually  either  disordered  or  dull.  There  is  little 
momentum  in  their  lives  which  the  moralist  can 
rely  upon  to  carry  them  onward  toward  rational 
ideals.  Deprived  of  this  support  his  theories  fall 
to  the  ground;  they  must  seem,  to  every  man 
whose  nature  cannot  elicit  them  from  his  own  ex- 
perience, empty  verbiage  and  irrelevant  dreams. 

Nothing  in  the  world  of  fact  obliges  us  to  agree 
with  Michael  Angelo  when  he  says  that  eternity 
can  no  more  be  separated  from  beauty  than  heat 
from  fire.  Beauty  is  a  thing  we  experience,  a 
value  we  feel ;  but  eternity  is  something  problem- 
atical. It  might  well  happen  that  beauty  should 
exist  for  a  while  in  our  contemplation  and  that 
eternity  should  have  nothing  to  do  with  it  or  with 
us.  It  might  well  happen  that  our  affections,  be- 
ing the  natural  expression  of  our  instincts  in  the 
family  and  in  the  state,  should  bind  us  for  a  while 
to  the  beings  with  whom  life  has  associated  us 
—  a  father,  a  lover,  a  child  —  and  that  these  affec- 
tions should  gradually  fade  with  the  decay  of  our 
vitality,  declining  in  the  evening  of  life,  and  pass- 


144  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

ing  away  when  we  surrenderfwr  breath,  without 
leading  us  to  any  single  and  sitpteme  good,  to  any 
eternal  love.  If,  there!£ore,  the  thoughts  and  con- 
solations we  have  been  rehearsing  have  sounded 
to  us  extravagant  or  unnatural,  we  cannot  justify 
them  by  attempting  to  prove  the  actual  existence 
of  their  objects,  by  producing  the  absolute  beauty 
or  by  showing  where  and  how  we  may  come  face  to 
face  with  God.  We  may  well  feel  that  beauty  and 
love  are  clear  and  good  enough  without  any  such 
additional  embodiments.  We  may  take  the  world 
as  it  is,  without  feigning  another,  and  study  actual 
experience  without  postulating  any  that  is  hypo- 
thetical. We  can  Welcome  beauty  for  the  pleasure 
it  affords  and  love  for  the  happiness  it  brings, 
without  asking  that?  these  things  should  receive 
supernatural  extensions?) 

But  we  should  have  studied  Plato  and  his 
kindred  poets  to  little  purpose  if  we  thought  that 
by  admitting  all  this  we  were  rejecting  more  than 
the  mythical  element  that  was  sometimes  mixed 
with  their  ideal  philosophy.  Its  essence  is  not 
touched  by  any  acknowledgment  of  what  seems 
true  or  probable  in  the  realm  of  actual  existence. 
Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  the  Platonic 
mind  than  a  complete  indifference  to  tRe  continu- 
ance of  experience  and  an  exclusive  interest  in  its 
comprehension.  If  we  wish  to  understand  this 
classic  attitude  of  reason,  all  we  need  do  is  to  let 


PLATONIC   LOVE  145 

reason  herself  instruct  us.  We  do  not  need  more 
data,  but  more  mind.  If  we  take  the  sights  and 
the  loves  that  our  mortal  limitations  have  allowed 
of,  and  surrender  ourselves  unreservedly  to  their 
natural  eloquence  ;  if  we  say  to  the  spirit  that  stirs 
within  them,  "  Be  thou  me,  impetuous  one  "  ;  if  we 
become,  as  Michael  Angelo  says  he  was,  all  eyes 
to  see  or  all  heart  to  feel,  then  the  force  of  our 
spiritual  vitality,  the  momentum  of  our  imagina- 
tion, will  carry  us  beyond  ourselves,  beyond  an 
interest  in  our  personal  existence  or  eventual  emo- 
tions, into  the  presence  of  a  divine  beauty  and 
an  eternal  truth  —  things  impossible  to  realize  in 
experience,  although  necessarily  envisaged  by 
thought. 

As  the  senses  that  perceive,  in  the  act  of  per- 
ceiving assert  an  absolute  reality  in  their  object, 
as  the  mind  that  looks  before  and  after  believes 
in  the  existence  of  a  past  and  a  future  which' 
cannot  now  be  experienced,  so  the  imagination 
and  the  heart  behold,  when  they  are  left  free 
to  expand  and  express  themselves,  an  absolute 
beauty  and  a  perfect  love.  Intense  contemplation 
disentangles  the  ideal  from  the  idol  of  sense,  and  a 
purified  will  rests  in  it  as  in  the  true  object  of 
worship.  These  are  the  oracles  of  reason,  the 
prophecies  of  those  profounder  spirits  who  in  the 
world  of  Nature  are  obedient  unto  death  because 
they  belong  intrinsically  to  a  world  where  death  is 


146  POETRY  AND  flELIGION 

impossible,  and  who  can  rise  continually,  by  ab- 
straction from  personal  sensibility,  into  identity 
with  the  eternal  objects  of  rational  life. 

Such  a  religion  must  elude  popular  app^ehe^sion 
until  it  is  translated  into  myths  and  cosmological 
dogmas.  It  is  easier  for  men  to  fill  out  the  life  of 
the  spirit  by  supplementing  the  facts  of  experience 
by  other  facts  for  which  there  is  no  evidence  than 
it  is  for  them  to  master  the  given  facts  and  turn 
them  to  spiritual  uses.  Many  can  fight  for  a 
doubtful  fact  when  they  cannot  perform  a  difficult 
idealization.  They  trust,  as  all  men  must,  to  what 
they  can  see ;  they  believe  in  thijigs  as  their  facul- 
ties represent  things  to  them.  By  the  same  right, 
however,  the  rationalizer  of  experience  believes  in 
his  visions  ;  he  rests,  like  the  meanest  of  us,  in  the 
present  object  of  his  thought.  So  long  as  we  live 
at  all  we  must  trust  in  something,  at  least  in  the 
coherence  and  pernianence  of  the  visible  world  and 
in  the  value  of  the  objects  of  our  own  desires.  And 
if  we  live  nobly,  we  are  under  the  same  necessity  of 
believing  in  noble  things.  However  unreal,  there- 
fore, these  Platonic  intuitions  may  seem  to  those  of 
us  whose  interests  lie  in  other  quarters,  we  may 
rest  assured  that  these  very  thoughts  would  domi- 
nate our  minds  and  these  eternal  companionships 
would  cheer  our  desolation,  if  we  had  wrestled  as 
manfully  with  the  same  passions  and  passed  through 
the  transmuting  fire  of  as  great  a  love. 


VI 


THE  ABSENCE   OF  RELIGION  IN  SHAKE- 
SPEARE 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  universality 
of  Shakespeare  as  not  the  least  of  his  glories.  No 
other  poet  has  given  so  many-sided  an  expression 
to  human  nature,  or  rendered  so  many  passions  and 
moods  with  such  an  appropriate  variety  of  style, 
sentiment,  and  accent.  If,  therefore,  we  were  asked 
to  select  one  monument  of  human  civilization  that 
should  survive  to  some  future  age,  or  be  trans- 
ported to  9,nother  planet  to  bear  witness  to  the 
inhabitants  there  of  what  we  have  been  upon  earth, 
we  should  probably  choose  the  works  of  Shake- 
speare. In  them  we  recognize  the  truest  portrait 
and  best  memorial  of  man.  Yet  the  archaeologists 
of  that  future  age,  or  the  cosmographers  of  that 
other  part  of  the  heavens,  after  conscientious  study 
of  our  Shakespearian  autobiography,  would  miscon- 
ceive our  life  in  one  important  respect.  They 
would  hardly  understand  that  man  had  had  a 
religion. 

There  are,  indeed,  numerous  exclamations  and  in- 
147 


148  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 


( 


vocations  in  Shakespeare  which  we,  who  have  other 
means  of  information,  know  to  be  evidences  of  cur- 
rent religious  ideas.  Shakespeare  adopts  these,  as 
he  adopts  the  rest  of  his  vocabulary,  from  the  soci- 
ety about  him.  But  he  seldom  or  never  gives  them 
their  original  value.  When  lago  says  "  's^Zood,"  a 
commentator  might  add  explanations  which  should 
involve  the  whole  philosophy  of  Christian  devo- 
tion ;  but  this  Christian  sentiment  is  not  in  lago's 
mind,  nor  in  Shakespeare's,  any  more  than  the  vir- 
tues of  Heracles  and  his  twelve  labours  are  in  the 
mind  of  every  slave  and  pander  that  cries  "/iercwZe" 
in  the  pages  of  Plautus  and  Terence.  Oaths  are 
the  fossils  of  piety.  The  geologist  recognizes  in 
them  the  relics  of  a  once  active  devotion,  but  they 
are  now  only  counters  and  pebbles  tossed  about  in 
the  unconscious  play  of  expression.  The  lighter 
and  more  constant  their  use,  the  less  their  mean- 
ing. 

Only  one  degree  more  inward  than  this  survival 
of  a  religious  vocabulary  in  profane  speech  is  the 
reference  we  often  find  in  Shakespeare  to  religious 
institutions  and  traditions.  There  are  monks, 
bishops,  and  cardinals;  there  is  even  mention  of 
saints,  although  none  is  ever  presented  to  us  in 
person.  The  clergy,  if  they  have  any  wisdom, 
have  an  earthly  one.  Friar  Lawrence  culls  his 
herbs  like  a  more  benevolent  Medea ;  and  Cardinal 
Wolgey  flings   away   ambition  with   a  profoundly 


\  RELIGION   IN   SHAKESPEARE  149 

Pagan  despair ;  his  robe  and  his  integrity  to  heaven 
are  cold  comfort  to  him.  Juliet  goes  to  shrift  to 
'  arrange  her  love  affairs,  and  Ophelia  should  go  to 
a  nunnery  to  forget  hers.  Even  the  chastity  of 
Isabella  has  little  in  it  that  would  have  been  out 
of  place  in  Iphigenia.  The  metaphysical  Hamlet 
himself  sees  a  "  true  ghost,"  but  so  far  reverts  to 
the  positivism  that  underlies  Shakespeare's  think- 
ing as  to  speak  soon  after  of  that  "undiscovered 
country  from  whose  bourn  no  traveller  returns." 

There  are  only  two  or  three  short  passages  in  the 
plays,  and  one  sonnet,  in  which  true  religious  feel- 
ing seems  to  break  forth.  The  most  beautiful  of 
these  passages  is  that  in  "  Kichard  II,"  which  com- 
memorates the  death  of  Mowbray,  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk :  — 

"Many  a  time  hath  banished  Norfolk  fought 
For  Jesu  Christ  in  glorious  Christian  field, 
Streaming  the  ensign  of  the  Christian  cross 
Against  black  Pagans,  Turks,  and  Saracens ; 
And,  toiled  with  works  of  war,  retired  himself 
To  Italy  ;  and  there,  at  Venice,  gave 
His  body  to  that  pleasant  country's  earth, 
And  his  pure  soul  unto  his  captain  Christ, 
Under  whose  colours  he  had  fought  so  long." 

This  is  tender  and  noble,  and  full  of  an  indescrib- 
able chivalry  and  pathos,  yet  even  here  we  find  the 
spirit  of  war  rather  than  that  of  religion,  and  a 
deeper  sense  of  Italy  than  of  heaven.     More  un- 


150  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

mixed  is  the  piety  of  Henry  V  after  the  battle  of 
Agincourt :  — 

*'  O  God,  thy  arm  was  here; 
And  not  to  us,  but  to  thy  arm  alone, 
Ascribe  we  all !  —  When,  without  stratagem, 
But  in  plain  shock  and  even  play  of  battle, 
Was  ever  known  so  great  and  little  loss, 
On  one  part  and  on  the  other  ?  —  Take  it,  God, 
For  it  is  none  but  thine.  .  .  . 
Come,  go  we  in  procession  to  the  village. 
And  be  it  death  proclaimed  through  our  host. 
To  boast  of  this,  or  take  that  praise  from  God, 
Which  is  his  only.  .  .  . 

Do  we  all  holy  rites ; 
Let  there  be  sung  Non  nobis  and  Te  Deum.''^ 

This  passage  is  certainly  a  true  expression  of 
religious  feeling,  and  just  the  kind  that  we  might 
expect  from  a  dramatist.  Keligion  appears  here 
I  as  a  manifestation  of  human  nature  and  as  an 
expression  of  human  passion.  The  passion,  how- 
ever, is  not  due  to  Shakespeare's  imagination,  but 
is  essentially  historical:  the  poet  has  simply  not 
rejected,  as  he  usually  does,  the  religious  element 
in  the  situation  he  reproduces.^ 

1 "  And  so  aboute  foure  of  the  clocke  in  the  afternoone,  the 
Kynge  when  he  saw  no  apparaunce  of  enemies,  caused  the 
retreite  to  be  blowen,  and  gathering  his  army  togither,  gave 
thankes  to  almightie  god  for  so  happy  a  victory,  causing  his 
prelates  and  chapleines  to  sing  this  psalm.  In  exitu  Israeli 
de  Egipto,  and  commandyng  every  man  to  kneels  downe 
on  the  grounde  at  this  verse  ;  Non  nobis,  domine,  non  nobis, 
sed  nomini  tuo  da  gloriam.    Which  done,  he  caused  Te  Deum, 


RELIGION   IN  SHAKESPEARE  151 

With  this  dramatic  representation  of  piety  we 
may  couple  another,  of  a  more  intimate  kind,  from 
the  Sonnets :  — 

"  Poor  soul,  the  centre  of  my  sinful  earth, 
Fooled  by  these  rebel  powers  that  thee  array, 
Why  dost  thou  pine  within  and  suffer  dearth, 
Painting  thy  outward  walls  so  costly  gay  ? 
Why  so  large  cost,  having  so  short  a  lease, 
Dost  thou  upon  thy  fading  mansion  spend  ? 
Shall  worms,  inheritors  of  this  excess. 
Eat  up  thy  charge  ?    Is  this  thy  body's  end  ? 
Then,  soul,  live  thou  upon  thy  servant's  loss, 
And  let  that  pine  to  aggravate  thy  store  ; 
Buy  terms  divine  by  selling  hours  of  dross, 
Within  be  fed,  without  be  rich  no  more  : 
Then  shalt  thou  feed  on  death,  that  feeds  on  men. 
And  death  once  dead,  there's  no  more  dying  then." 

This  sonnet  contains  more  than  a  natural  reli- 
gious emotion  inspired  by  a  single  event.  It  con- 
tains reflection,  and  expresses  a  feeling  not  merely 
dramatically  proper  but  rationally  just.  A  mind 
that  habitually  ran  into  such  thoughts  would  be 
philosophically  pious ;  it  would  be  spiritual.  The 
Sonnets,  as  a  whole,  are  spiritual ;  their  passion  is 
transmuted  into  discipline.  Their  love,  which, 
whatever  its  nominal  object,  is  hardly  anything  but 
love  of  beauty  and  youth  in  general,  is  made  to 
triumph  over  time  by  a  metaphysical  transforma- 

with  certain  anthems,  to  be  song,  giving  laud  &  praise  to  god, 
and  not  boasting  of  his  owne  force  or  any  humaine  power." 

HOLINSHKD. 


152  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

tion  of  the  object  into  something  eternal.  At  first 
this  is  the  beauty  of  the  race  renewing  itself  by 
generation,  then  it  is  the  description  of  beauty  in 
the  poet's  verse,  and  finally  it  is  the  immortal  soul 
enriched  by  the  contemplation  of  that  beauty.  This 
noble  theme  is  the  more  impressively  rendered  by 
being  contrasted  with  another,  with  a  vulgar  love 
that  by  its  nature  refuses  to  be  so  transformed  and 
transmuted.  "  Two  loves,"  cries  the  poet,  in  a  line 
that  gives  us  the  essence  of  the  whole,  "  Two  loves 
I  have,  —  of  comfort,  and  despair." 

In  all  this  depth  of  experience,  however,  there  is 
still  wanting  any  religious  image.  The  Sonnets  are 
spiritual,  but,  with  the  doubtful  exception  of  the 
one  quoted  above,  they  are  not  Christian.  And,  of 
course,  a  poet  of  Shakespeare's  time  could  not  have 
found  any  other  mould  than  Christianity  for  his 
religion.  In  our  day,  with  our  wide  and  conscien- 
tious historical  sympathies,  it  may  be  possible  for 
us  to  find  in  other  rites  and  doctrines  than  those 
of  our  ancestors  an  expression  of  some  ultimate 
truth.  But  for  Shakespeare,  in  the  matter  of  reli- 
gion, the  choice  lay  between  Christianity  and  noth- 
ing. He  chose  nothing;  he  chose  to  leave  his 
heroes  and  himself  in  the  presence  of  life  and  of 
death  with  no  other  philosophy  than  that  which 
the  profane  world  can  suggest  and  understand. 

This  [positivism,  we  need  hardly  say,  was  not  due 
to  any  grossness  or  sluggishness  in  his  imagination. 


RELIGION   IN   SHAKESPEARE  153 

Shakespeare  could  be  ideg-Jistic  when  he  dreamed, 
as  he  could  be  spiritual  when  he  reflected.  The 
spectacle  of  life  did  not  pass  before  his  eyes  as  a 
mere  phantasmagoria.  He  seized  upon  its  princi- 
ples; he  became  wise.  Nothing  can  exceed  the 
ripeness  of  his  seasoned  judgment,  or  the  occa- 
sional breadth,  sadness,  and  terseness  of  his  reflec- 
tion. The  author  of  "  Hamlet "  could  not  be  without 
metaphysical  aptitude ;  "  Macbeth  "  could  not  have 
been  written  without  a  sort  of  sibylline  inspiration, 
or  the  Sonnets  without  something  of  the  Platonic 
mind.  It  is  all  the  more  remarkable,  therefore, 
that  we  should  have  to  search  through  all  the 
works  of  Shakespeare  to  find  half  a  dozen  passages 
that  have  so  much  as  a  religious  sound,  and  that 
even  these  passages,  upon  examination,  should  prove 
not  to  be  the  expression  of  any  deep  religious  con- 
ception. If  Shakespeare  had  been  without  meta- 
physical capacity,  or  without  moral  maturity,  we 
could  have  explained  his  strange  insensibility  to 
religion ;  but  as  it  is,  we  must  marvel  at  his  indif- 
ference and  ask  ourselves  what  can  be  the  causes 
of  it.  For,  even  if  we  should  not  regard  the  ab- 
sence of  religion  as  an  imperfection  in  his  own 
thought,  we  must  admit  it  to  be  an  incompleteness 
in  his  portrayal  of  the  thought  of  others.  Positiv- 
ism may  be  a  virtue  in  a  philosopher,  but  it  is  a 
vice  in  a  dramatist,  who  has  to  render  those  hu- 
man passions  to  which  the   religious  imagination 


154  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

has  always  given  a  larger  meaning  and  a  richer 
depth. 

Those  greatest  poets  by  whose  side  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  put  •  Shakespeare  did  not  forego  this  ad- 
J  vantage.  They  gave  us  man  with  his  piety  and 
the  world  with  its  gods.  H^mer  is  the  chief  reposi- 
tory of  the  Greek  religion,  and  Dante  the  faithful 
interpreter  of  the  Catholic.  iTature  would  have 
been  inconceivable  to  them  without  the  super- 
natural, or  man  without  the  influence  and  com- 
panionship of  the  gods.  These  poets  live  in  a 
cosmos.  In  their  minds,  as  in  the  mind  of  their 
age,  the  fragments  of  experience  have  fallen  to- 
gether into  a  perfect  picture,  like  the  bits  of  glass  in 
a  kaleidoscope.  Their  universe  is  a  total.  Reason 
and  imagination  have  mastered  it  completely  and 
peopled  it.  No  chaos  remains  beyond,  or,  if  it 
does,  it  is  thought  of  with  an  involuntary  shudder 
that  soon  passes  into  a  healthy  indifference.  The^ 
have  a  theory  of  human  life ;  they  see  man  in  his 
relations,  surrounded  by  a  kindred  universe  in 
which  he  fills  his  allotted  place.  He  knows  the 
meaning  and  issue  of  his  life,  and  does  not  voyage 
without  a  chart. 

Shakespeare's  world,  on  the  contrary,  is  only  the 
world  of  human  society.  The  cosmos  eludes  him ; 
he  does  not  seem  to  feel  the  need  of  framing  that 
idea.  He  depicts  human  life  in  all  its  richness 
and  variety,  but  leaves  that  life  without  a  setting. 


BELIGION  IN   SHAKESPEARE  155 

and  consequently  without  a  meaning.  If  we  asked 
him  to  tell  us  what  is  the  significance  of  the 
passion  and  beauty  he  had  so  vividly  displayed, 
and  what  is  the  outcome  of  it  all,  he  could  hardly 
answer  in  any  other  words  than  those  he  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  Macbeth :  — 

"  To-morrow,  and  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow, 
Creeps  in  this  petty  pace  from  day  to  day, 
To  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time  ; 
And  all  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools 
The  way  to  dusty  death.     Out,  out,  brief  candle  1 
Life's  but  a  walking  shadow,  a  poor  player 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage 
And  then  is  heard  no  more  :  it  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing." 

How  differently  would  Homer  or  Dante  have 
answered  that  question !  Their  tragedy  would 
have  been  illumined  by  a  sense  of  the  divinity  of 
life  and  beauty,  or  by  a  sense  of  the  sanctity  of 
suffering  and  death.  Their  faith  had  enveloped 
the  world  of  experience  in  a  world  of  imagination, 
in  which  the  ideals  of  the  reason,  of  the  fancy,  and 
of  the  heart  had  a  natural  expression.  They  had 
caught  in  the  reality  the  hint  of  a  lovelier  fable,  — 
a  fable  in  which  that  reality  was  completed  and 
idealized,  and  made  at  once  vaster  in  its  extent 
and  more  intelligible  in  its  principle.  They  had, 
as  it  were,  dramatized  the  universe,  and  endowed 
it  with  the  tragic  unities.     In  contrast  with  such  a 


156  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

luminous  philosophy  and  so  well-digested  an  expe- 
rience, the  silence  of  Shakespeare  and  his  philo- 
sophical incoherence  have  something  in  them  that 
is  still  heathen ;  something  that  makes  us  wonder 
whether  the  northern  mind,  even  in  him,  did  not 
remain  morose  and  .barbarous  at  its  inmost  core. 

But.  before  we  allow  ourselves  such  hasty  and 
general  inferences,  we  may  well  stop  to  consider 
whether  there  is  not  some  simpler  answer  to  our 
question.  An  epic  poet,  we  might  say,  naturally 
deals  with  cosmic  themes.  He  needs-  supernatural 
machinery  because  he  depicts  the  movement  of 
human  affairs  in  their  generality,  as  typified  in  the 
figures  of  heroes  whose  function  it  is  to  embody  or 
to  overcome  elemental  forces.  Such  a  poet's  world 
is  fabulous,  because  his  inspiration  is  impersonal. 
But  the  dramatist  renders  the  concrete  reality  of 
life.  He  has  no  need  of  a  superhuman  setting  for 
"*Xis  pictures.  Such  a  setting  would  destroy  the 
vitality  of  his  creations.  His  plots  should  involve 
only  bfflnaii^tors  and  humgiii^motives :  the  deus 
ex  machina  has  always  been  regarded  as  an  inter- 
loper on  his  stage.  The  passions  of  man  are  his 
all-sufiicient  material;  he  should  weave  his  whole 
fabric  out  of  them. 

To  admit  the  truth  of  all  this  would  not,  how- 
ever, solve  our  problem.  The  dramatist  cannot 
be  expected  to  put  cosmogonies  on  the  boards. 
Miracle-plays  become  dramatic  only  when  they  be- 


RELIGION  IN   SHAKESPEARE  157 

come  human.  But  the  supernatural  world,  which 
the  playwright  does  not  bring  before  the  foot- 
lights, may  exist  nevertheless  in  the  minds  of  his 
characters  and  of  his  audience.  He  may  refer  to 
it,  appeal  to  it,  and  imply  it,  in  the  actions  and 
in  the  sentiments  he  attributes  to  his  heroes. 
And  if  the  comparison  of  Shakespeare  with 
Homer  or  Dante  on  the  score  of  religious  in- 
spiration is  invalidated  by  the  fact  that  he  is  a 
dramatist  while  they  are  epic  ^oets,  a  comparison 
may  yet  be  instituted  between  Shakespeare  and 
other  dramatists,  from  which  his  singular  insensi- 
bility to  religion  will  as  readily  appear. 

Greek  tragedy,  as  we  know,  is  dominated  by  the 
idea  of  fate.  Even  when  the  gods  do  not  appear 
in  person,  or  where  the  service  or  neglect  of  them 
is  not  the  moving  cause  of  the  whole  play,  —  as 
it  is  in  the  "Bacchse''  and  the  ^^  Hippoly tus  "  of 
Euripides,  —  still  the  deep  conviction  of  the  limits 
and  conditions  of  human  happiness  underlies  the 
fable.  The  will  of  man  fulfils  the  decrees  of 
Heaven.  The  hero  manifests  a  higher  force  than 
his  own,  both  in  success  and  in  failure.  The 
fates  guide  the  willing  and  drag  the  unwilling. 
There  is  no  such  fragmentary  view  of  life  as  we 
have  in  our  romantic  drama,  where  accidents  make 
the  meaningless  .happiness  or  unhappiness  of  a 
supersensitive  adventurer.  Life  is  seen  whole, 
although   in   miniature.      Its   boundaries    and   its 


158  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

principles  are  studied  more  than  its  incidents. 
The  human,  therefore,  everywhere  merges  with 
the  divine.  Our  mortality,  being  sharply  defined 
and  much  insisted  upon,  draws  the  attention  all 
the  more  to  that  eternity  of  Nature  and  of  law 
in  which  it  is  embosomed.  Nor  is  the  fact  of 
superhuman  control  left  for  our  reflection  to  dis- 
cover ;  it  is  emphatically  asserted  in  those  oracles 
on  which  so  much  of  the  action  commonly  turns. 

When  the  Greek  religion  was  eclipsed  by  the 
Christian,  the  ancient  way  of  conceiving  the  ultra- 
human  relations  of  human  life  became  obsolete. 
It  was  no  longer  possible  to  speak  with  sincerity 
of  the  oracles  and  gods,  of  Nemesis  and  v/?pis. 
Yet  for  a  long  time  it  was  not  possible  to  speak 
in  any  other  terms.  The  new  ideas  were  without 
artistic  definition,  and  literature  was  paralyzed. 
But  in  the  course  of  ages,  when  the  imagination 
had  had  time  and  opportunity  to  develop  a  Chris- 
tian art  and  a  Christian  philosophy,  the  dramatic 
poets  were  ready  to  deal  with  the  new  themes. 
Only  their  readiness  in  this  respect  surpassed 
their  ability,  at  least  their  ability  to  please  those 
who  had  any  memory  of  the  ancient  perfection 
of  the  arts. 

The  miracle-plays  were  the  beginning.  Their 
crudity  was  extreme  and  their  levity  of  the  frank- 
est ;  but  they  had  still,  like  the  Greek  plays,  a  re- 
ligious excuse  and  a  religious  background.      They 


RELIGION   IN   SHAKESPEARE  159 

were  not  without  dramatic  power,  but  their  offences 
against  taste  and  their  demands  upon  faith  were 
too  great  for  them  to  survive  the  Renaissance. 
Such  plays  as  the  "Polyeucte"  of  Corneille  and 
the  "  Devocion  de  la  Cruz  "  of  Calderon,  with  other 
Spanish  plays  that  might  be  mentioned,  are  ex- 
amples of  Christian  dramas  by  poets  of  culture; 
but  as  a  whole  we  must  say  that  Christianity, 
while  it  succeeded  in  expressing  itself  in  painting 
and  in  architecture,  failed  to  express  itself  in  any 
adequate  drama.  Where  Clmatianity  was  strong, 
the  drama  either  disagpearedjor  became  secular ; 
and  it  has  never  again  dealt  with  cosmic  themes 
successfully,  except  in  such  hands  as  those  of 
Goethe  and  Wagner,  men  who  either  neglected 
Christianity  altogether  or  used  it  only  as  an  in- 
cidental ornament,  having,  as  they  say,  transcended 
it  in  their  philosophy. 

The  fact  is,  that  art  and  reflection  have  never 
been  able  to  unite  perfectly  the  two  elements  of 
a  civilization  like  ours,  that  draws  its  culture  fronj^ 
one  source  and  its  religion  from  another.  Modern 
taste  has  ever  been,  and  still  is,  largel^r  exotic, 
largely  a  revolution  in  favour  of  something  ancient 
or  foreign.  The  more  cultivated  a  period  has  been, 
the  more  wholly  it  has  reverted  to  antiquity  for 
its  inspiration.  The  existence  of  that  completer 
world  has  haunted  all  minds  struggling  for  self- 
expression,    and     interfered,    perhaps,    with     the 


160  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

natural  development  of  tlieir  genius.  The  old  art 
which  they  could  not  disregard  distracted  them 
from  the  new  ideal,  and  prevented  them  from  em- 
bodying this  ideal  outwardly;  while  the  same 
ideal,  retaining  their  inward  allegiance,  made  their 
revivals  of  ancient  forms  artificial  and  incomplete. 
The  strange  idea  could  thus  gain  admittance  that 
art  was  not  called  to  deal  with  everything;  that 
its  sphere  was  the  world  of  polite  conventions. 
The  serious  and  the  sacred  things  of  life  were  to 
be  left  unexpressed  and  inarticulate;  while  the 
arts  masqueraded  in  the  forms  of  a  Pagan  antiq- 
uity, to  which  a  triviality  was  at  the  same  time 
attributed  which  in  fact  it  had  not  possessed. 
This  unfortunate  separation  of  experience  and  its 
artistic  expression  betrayed  itself  in  the  inade- 
quacy of  what  was  beautiful  and  the  barbarism 
of  what  was  sincere. 

When  such  are  the  usual  conditions  of  artistic 
creation,  we  need  not  wonder  that  Shakespeare,  a 
poet  of  the  Renaissance,  should  have  confined  his 
representation  of  life  to  its  secular  aspects,  and 
that  his  readers  after  him  should  rather  have 
marvelled  at  the  variety  of  the  things  of  which 
he  showed  an  understanding  than  have  taken  note 
of  the  one  thing  he  overlooked.  To  omit  religion 
was  after  all  to  omit  what  was  not  felt  to  be  con- 
genial to  a  poet's  mind.  The  poet  was  to  trace 
for  us  the  passionate   and  romantic   embroideries 


RELIGION  IN   SHAKESPEARE  161 

of  life;  he  was  to  be  artful  and  humane,  and 
above  all  he  was  to  be  delightful.  The  beauty  and 
charm  of  things  had  nothing  any  longer  to  do 
with  those  painful  mysteries  and  cont^ations 
which  made  the  temper  of  the__pioiis^o  acrid  and 
sad.  In  Shakespeare's  time  and  country,  to  be 
religious  already  began  to  mean  to  be_Puritanical ; 
and  in  the  divorce  between  the  fulness  of  life 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  depth  and  unity  of  faith 
on  the  other,  there  could  be  no  doubt  to  which 
side  a  man  of  imaginative  instincts  would  attach 
himself.  A  world  of  passion  and  beauty  without 
a  meaning  must  seem  to  him  more  interesting  and 
worthy  than  a  world  of  empty  principle  and 
dogma,  meagre,  fanatical,  and  false.  It  was  be- 
yond the  power  of  synthesis  possessed  by  that  age 
and  nation  to  find  a  principle  of  all  passion  and  a 
religion  of  all  life. 

This  power  of  synthesis  is  indeed  so  difiicult  and 
rare  that  the  attempt  to  gain  it  is  sometimes  con- 
demned as  too  philosophical,  and  as  tending  to 
embarrass  the  critical  eye  and  creative  imagination 
with  futile  theories.  We  might  say,  for  instance, 
that  the  absence  of  religion  in  Shakespeare  was  a 
sign  of  his  good  sense ;  that  a  healthy  instinct  kept 
his  attention  within  the  sublunary  world ;  and  that 
he  was  in  that  respect  superior  to  Homer  and  to 
Dante.  For,  while  they  allowed  their  wisdom  to 
clothe  itself  in  fanciful  forms,  he  gave  us  his  in  its 


162  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

immediate  truth,  so  that  he  embodied  what  they 
signified.  The  supernatural  machinery  of  their 
poems  was,  we  might  say,  an  accidental  incum- 
brance, a  traditional  means  of  expression,  which 
they  only  half  understood,  and  which  made  their 
representation  of  life  indirect  and  partly  unreal. 
Shakespeare,  on  the  other  hand,  had  reached  his 
poetical  majority  and  independence.  He  rendered 
human  experience  no  longer  through  symbols,  but 
by  direct  imaginative  representation.  What  I  have 
treated  as  a  limitation  in  him  would,  then,  appear 
as  the  maturity  of  his  strength. 

There  is  always  a  class  of  minds  in  whom  the^ 
spectacle  of  history  produces  a  certain  apathy  of 
reason.  They  flatter  themselves  that  they  can 
escape  defeat  by  not  attempting  the  highest  tasks. 
We  need  not  here  stop  to  discuss  what  value  as 
truth  a  philosophical  synthesis  may  hope  to  attain, 
nor  have  we  to  protest  against  the  aesthetic  prefer- 
ence for  the  sketch  and  the  episode  over  a  reasoned 
and  unified  rendering  of  life.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
the  human  race  hitherto,  whenever  it  has  reached  a 
phase  of  comparatively  high  development  and  free- 
dom, has  formed  a  conception  of  its  place  in  Nature, 
no  less  than  of  the  contents  of  its  life;  and  that 
this  conception  has  been*  the  occasion  of  religious 
sentiments  and  practices ;  and  further,  that  every 
art,  whether  literary  or  plastic,  has  drawn  its 
favourite  themes  from  this  religious  sphere.     The 


RELIGION  IN   SHAKESPEARE  163 

poetic  imagination  has  not  commonly  stopped  short 
of  the  philosophical  in  representing  a  superhuman 
environment  of  man. 

Shakespeare,  however,  is  remarkable  among  the 
greater  poets  for  being  without  a  philosophy  and 
without  a  religion.  In  his  drama  there  is  no 
fixed  conception  of  any  forces,  natural  or  moral, 
dominating  and  transcending  our  mortal  energies. 
Whether  this  characteristic  be  regarded  as  a  merit 
or  as  a  defect,  its  presence  cannot  be  denied. 
Those  who  think  it  wise  or  possible  to  refrain 
from  searching  for  general  prmciples,  and  are 
satisfied  with  the  successive  empirical  appearance 
of  things,  without  any  faith  in  their  rational  con- 
tinuity or  completeness,  may  well  see  in  Shake- 
speare their  natural  prophet.  For  he,  too,  has  been 
satisfied  with  the  successive  description  of  various 
passions  and  events.  His  world,  like  the  earth  be- 
fore Columbus,  extends  in  an  indefinite  plane  which 
he  is  not  tempted  to  explore. 

Those  of  us,  however,  who  believe  in  circum- 
navigation, and  who  think  that  both  human  reason 
and  human  imagination  require  a  certain  totality  in 
our  views,  and  who  feel  that  the  most  important 
thing  in  life  is  the  lesson  of  it,  and  its  relation  to 
its  own  ideal,  —  we  can  hardly  find  in  Shakespeare 
all  that  the  highest  poet  could  give.  Fulness  is  not 
necessarily  wholeness,  and  the  most  profuse  wealth 
of  characterization  seems   still   inadequate    as    a 


164  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

picture  of  experience,  if  this  picture  is  not  some- 
how seen  from  above  and  reduced  to  a  dramatic 
unity,  —  to  that  unity  of  meaning  that  can  suffuse 
its  endless  details  with  something  of  dignity,  sim- 
plicity, and  peace.  This  is  the  imaginative  power 
found  in  several  poets  we  have  mentioned,  —  the 
power  that  gives  certain  passages  in  Lucretius  also 
their  sublimity,  as  it  gives  sublimity  to  many 
passages  in  the  Bible. 

For  what  is  required  for  theoretic  wholeness  is 
not  this  or  that  system  but  some  system.  Its  value 
is  not  the  value  of  truth,  but  that  of  victorious 
imagination.  Unity  of  conception  is  an  aesthetic 
merit  no  less  than  a  logical  demand.  A  fine 
sense  of  the  dignity  and  pathos  of  life  cannot  be 
attained  unless  we  conceive  somehow  its  outcome 
and  its  relations.  Without  such  a  conception  our 
emotions  cannot  be  steadfast  and  enlightened. 
Without  it  the  imagination  cannot  fulfil  its  essen- 
tial function  or  achieve  its  supreme  success. 
Shakespeare  himself,  had  it  not  been  for  the  time 
and  place  in  which  he  lived,  when  religion  and 
imagination  blocked  rather  than  helped  each  other, 
would  perhaps  have  allowed  more  of  a  cosmic  back- 
ground to  appear  behind  his  crowded  scenes.  If 
the  Christian  in  him  was  not  the  real  man,  at  least 
the  Pagan  would  have  spoken  frankly.  The  ma- 
terial forces  of  Nature,  or  their  vague  embodiment 
in  some  northern  pantheon,  would  then  have  stood 


RELIGION  IN   SHAKESPEARE  165 

behind  his  heroes.  The  various  movements  of 
events  would  have  appeared  as  incidents  in  a  larger 
drama  to  which  they  had  at  least  some  symbolic 
relation.  We  should  have  been  awed  as  well  as 
saddened,  and  purified  as  well  as  pleased,  by  being 
made  to  feel  the  dependence  of  human  accidents 
upon  cosmic  forces  and  their  fated  evolution.  Then 
we  should  not  have  been  able  to  say  that  Shake- 
speare was  without  a  religion.  Qlor  the  effort  of 
religion,  says  Goethe,  is  to  adjust  us  to  the  inevit- 
able ;  each  religion  in  its  way  strives  to  bring  about 
this  consummation; 


VII 
THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM 


It  is  an  observation  at  first  sight  melancholy 
but  in  the  end,  perhaps,  enlightening,  that  the  eatc 
lie^t  poets  are  the  most  ideal,  and  that  primitive 
ages  furnish  the  jjQQst  heroic  characters  and  have 
the  clearest  vision  of  a  perfect  life.  The  Homeric 
times^must  have  been  full  of  ignorance  and  suffer- 
ing. In  those  little  barbaric  towns,  in  those  camps 
and  farms,  in  those  shipyards,  there  must  have 
been  much  insecurity  and  superstition.  That  age 
was  singularly  poor  in  all  that  concerns  the  con- 
venience of  life  and  the  entertainment  of  the  mind 
with  arts  and  sciences.  Yet  it  had  a  sense  for 
civilization.  That  machinery  of  life  which  men 
were  beginning  to  devise  appealed  to  them  as 
poetical;  they  knew  its  ultimate  justification  and 
studied  its  incipient  processes  with  delight.  The 
poetry  of  that  simple  and  ignorant  age  was,  ac- 
cordingly, the  sweetest  and  sanest  that  the  world 
has  known;  the  most  faultless  in  taste,  and  the 
most  even  and  lofty  in  inspiration.  Without  lack- 
166 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  It) 7 

ing  variety  and  homeliness,  it  bathed  all  things 
human  in  the  golden  light  of  morning ;  it  clothed 
sorrow  in  a  kind  of  majesty,  instinct  with  both 
self-control  and  heroic  frankness.  Nowhere  else 
can  we  find  so  noble  a  rendering  of  human  nature, 
so  spontaneous  a  delight  in  life,  so  uncompromising 
a  dedication  to  beauty,  and  such  a  gift  of  seeing 
beauty  in  everything.  Homer,  the  first  of  poets, 
was  also  the  best  and  the  most  poetical. 

From  this  beginning,  if  we  look  down  the  history 
of  Occidental  literature,  we  see  the  power  of  ideali- 
zation steadily  decline.  For  while  it  finds  here 
and  there,  as  in  Dante,  a  more  spiritual  theme  and 
a  subtler  and  riper  intellect,  it  pays  for  that  advan- 
tage by  a  more  than  equivalent  loss  in  breadth, 
sanity,  and  happy  vigour.  And  if  ever  imagina- 
tion bursts  out  with  a  greater  potency,  as  in  Shake- 
speare (who  excels  the  patriarch  of  poetry  in  depth 
of  passion  and  vividness  of  characterization,  and  in 
those  exquisite  bubblings  of  poetry  and  humour  in 
which  English  genius  is  at  its  best),  yet  Shake- 
speare also  pays  the  price  by  a  notable  loss  in  taste, 
in  sustained  inspiration,  in  consecration,  and  in 
rationality.  There  is  more  or  less  rubbish  in  his 
greatest  works.  When  we  come  down  to  our  own 
day  we  find  poets  of  hardly  less  natural  endow- 
ment (for  in  endowment  all  ages  are  perhaps  alike) 
and  with  vastly  richer  sources  of  inspiration;  for 
they  have  many  arts  and  literatures  behind  them, 


168  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

with  the  spectacle  of  a  varied  and  agitated  society, 
a  world  which  is  the  living  microcosm  of  its  own 
history  and  presents  in  one  picture  many  races, 
arts,  and  religions.     Our  poets  have  more  wonder- 
ful tragedies  of  the  imagination  to  depict  than  had 
Homer,  whose  world  was  innocent  of  any  essential 
defeat,  or  Dante,  who  believed  in  the  world's  defin- 
itive redemption.     Or,  if  perhaps  their  inspiration 
is  comic,  they  have  the  pageant  of  mediseval  man- 
ners, with  its  picturesque  artifices  and  passionate 
fancies,  and  the  long  comedy  of  modern  social  rev- 
olutions, so  illusory  in  their  aims  and  so  productive 
in  their  aimlessness.      They  have,  moreover,  the 
new  and  marvellous  conception  which  natural  sci- 
ence has  given  us  of  the  world  and  of  the  condi- 
tions of  human  progress. 
^  With  all   these   lessons    of   experience   behind 
\  them,  however,  we  find   our  contemporary  poets 
<  incapable   of  any   high  wisdom,  incapable  of  any 
/  imaginative  rendering  of  human  life  and  its  mean- 
^  ing.     Our  poets  are  things  of  shreds  and  patches ; 
they  give  us  episodes  and   studies,  a  sketch  of 
this  curiosity,   a  glimpse  of   that  romance;  they 
/  have  no  totaLrision,  no  grasp  of  the  whole..reality, 
and  consequentl.y^,oj?apacit;yifor^^_sana^Jid--sJifiady 
,    ^idealization^     The   comparatively  barbarous   ages 
had  a  poetry  of  the   ideal;   they  had  visions  of 
y       beauty,  order,  and  perfection.   This  age  of  material 
elaboration  has   no   sense   for   those  things.      Its 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  169 

fancy  is  retrospective,  whimsical,  and  flickering; 
its  ideals,  when  it  has  any,  are  negative  and  par- 
tial ;  its  moral  strength  is  a  blind  and  miscella- 
neous vehemence.  Its  peetry^  in  a  word,,  is*  the 
poetry  of  barbarism.  ^^ 

T5is  poetry  should  be  viewed  in  relation  to  the  ] 
general  moral  crisis  and  imaginative  disintegration 
of  which  it  gives  a  verbal  echo ;  then  we  shall  avoid 
the  injustice  of  passing  it  over  as  insignificant, 
no  less  than  the  imbecility  of  hailing  it  as  essen- 
tially glorious  and  successful.  We  must  remember 
that  the  imagination  of  our  race  has  been  subject 
to  a  double  discipline.  It  has  been  formed  partly  -^ 
in  the  school  of  classic  literature  and  polity,  and 
partly  in  the  school  of  Christian  piety.  This  duality 
of  inspiration,  this  contradiction  between  the  two 
accepted  methods  of  rationalizing  the  world,  has 
been  a  chief  source  of  that  incoherence,  that  roman- 
tic indistinctness  and  imperfection,  which  largely 
characterize  the  products  of  the  modern  arts.  A 
man  cannot  serve  two  masters ;  yet  the  conditions 
have  not  been  such  as  to  allow  him  wholly  to 
despise  the  one  or  wholly  to  obey  the  other.  To 
be  wholly  Pagan  is  impossible  after  the  dissolution 
of  that  civilization  which  had  seemed  universal, 
and  that  empire  which  had  believed  itself  eternal. 
To  be  wholly  Christian  is  impossible  for  a  similar 
reason,  now  that  the  illusion  and  cohesion  of  Chris- 
tian ages  is  lost,  and  for  the  further  reason  that 


^ 


170  POETRY   AND   KELIGION 

Christianity  was  itself  fundamentally  eclectic.  Be- 
fore it  could  succeed  and  dominate  men  even  for  a 
time,  it  was  obliged  to  adjust  itself  to  reality,  to 
incorporate  many  elements  of  Pagan  wisdom,  and  to 
accommodate  itself  to  many  habits  and  passions  at 
^  variance  with  its  own  ideal. 

O     In  these  latter  times,  with  the  prodigious  growth 
i  ^    of  material  life  in  elaboration  and  of  mental  life  in 
/      diffusion,  there  has  supervened  upon  this  old  dual- 
/       ism  a  new  faith  in  man's  absolute  power,  a  kind 
of  return   to  the   inexperience   and   self-assurance 
of  youth.     This  new  inspiration  has  made  many 
minds   indifferent    to    the   two    traditional    disci- 
plines ;  ^either  is  seriously  nccpptpfl  V>y  fliP^]T^^^T' 
the  reason,  excellent  from  their  own  point  of  view, 
tliat  no  discipline  whatever  is  needed.     The  mem- 
ory of  ancient  aisillusions  nas  faded  with  time. 
Ignorance  of  the  past  has  bred  contempt  for  the 
lessons  which  the  past  might  teach.     Men  prefer 
to  repeat  the  old  experiment  without  knowing  that 
x^they  repeat  it. 

I  say  advisedly  ignorance  of  the  past,  in  spite  of 
the  unprecedented  historical  erudition  of  our  time ; 
for  life  is  an  ^artj[iot_to_be  learned  by  observation, 
and  the  most  minute  and  comprehensive  studies  do 
not  teach  us  what  the  spirit  of  man  should  have 
learned  by  its  long  living.  We  study  the  past  as  a 
dead  object,  as  a  ruin,  not  as  an  authority  and  as 
an  experiment.     One  reason  why  history  was  less 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  171 

interesting  to  former  ages  was  that  they  were  less 
conscious  of  separation  from  the  past.  The  per- 
spective of  time  was  less  clear  because  the  synthe- 
sis of  experience  was  more  complete.  The  mind 
does  not  easily  discriminate  the  successive  phases 
of  an  action  in  which  it  is  still  engaged;  it  does 
not  arrange  in  a  temporal  series  the  elements  of  a 
single  perception,  but  posits  them  all  together  as 
constituting  a  permanent  and  real  object.  Human 
nature  and  the  life  of  the  world  were  real  and 
stable  objects  to  the  apprehension  of  our  fore- 
fathers ;  the  actors  changed,  but  not  the  characters 
or  the  play.  Men  were  then  less  studious  of 
derivations  because  they  were  more  conscious  of 
identities.  They  thought  of  all  reality  as  in  a 
sense  contemporary,  and  in  considering  the  maxims 
of  a  philosopher  or  the  style  of  a  poet,  they  were 
not  primarily  concerned  with  settling  his  date  and 
describing  his  environment.  The  standard  by  which  \ 
they  judged  was  eternal ;  the  environment  in  which 
man  found  himself  did  not  seem  to  them  subject  of 
any  essential  change. 

To  us  the  picturesque  element  in  history  is 
more  striking  because  we  feel  ourselves  the  chil- 
dren of  our  own  age  only,  an  age  which  being 
itself  singular  and  revolutionary,  tends  to  read 
its  own  character  into  the  past,  and  to  regard  all 
other  periods  as  no  less  fragmentary  and  effer- 
vescent than  itself.     The  changing  and  the  per- 


\ 


172  POETRY  AND  EELIGION 

manent  elements  are,  indeed,  everywhere  present, 
and  the  bias  of  the  observer  may  emphasize  the 
one  or  the  other  as  it  will:  the  only  question  is 
whether  we  find  the  significance  of  things  in  their 
variations  or  in  their  similarities. 

Now  the  habit  of  regarding  the  past  as  effete 
and  as  merely  a  stepping-stone  to  something  pres- 
ent or  future,  is  unfavourable  to  any  true  appre- 
hension of  that  element  in  the  past  which  was 
vital  and  which  remains  eternal.  It  is  a  habit  of 
thought  that  destroys  the  sense  of  the  moral  iden- 
tity of  all  ages,  by  virtue  of  its  very  insistence  on 
the  mechanical  derivation  of  one  age  from  another. 
Existences  that  cause  one  another  exclude  one  an- 
other; each  is  alien  to  the  rest  inasmuch  as  it 
is  the  product  of  new  and  different  conditions. 
Ideas  that  cause  nothing  unite  all  things  by  giv- 
ing them  a  common  point  of  reference  and  a  single 
standard  of  value. 

The  classic  and  the  Ohr^^^in  °yiSt^Ti^°  were  both 
systems  of  ideas,  attempts  to  seize  the  eternal 
morphology  of  reality  and  describe  its  unchang- 
ing constitution.  The  imagination  was  summoned 
thereby  to  contemplate  the  highesi^bjei^ts,  and  the 
essence  of  things  being  thus  described,  their  in- 
signiticant  variations  could  retain  little  irapor- 
ftance  and  the  study  of  these  variations  might  well 
seem  superficial.  Mechanical^cience,  the  scieiice  of 
causes,  was  accordingly  neglected,  while  the  science 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  173 

of  values,  with  the  arts  that  express  these  values,  . 
was  exclusively  pursued.  The  reverse  has  now 
occurred  and  the  spirit  of  life,  innocent  of  any 
rationalizing  discipline  and  deprived  of  an  au- 
thoritative and  adequate  method  of  expression,  has 
relapsed  into  miscellaneous  and  shallow  exuber- 
ance. Religion  and  art  have  become  short-winded. 
I  They  have  forgotten  the  old  maxim  that  we  should 
»  copy  in  order  to  be  copied  and  remember  in  order 
^  to  be  remembered.  It  is  true  that  the  multiplicity 
of  these  incompetent  efforts  seems  to  many  a  com- 
pensation for  their  ill  success,  or  even  a  ground 
for  asserting  their  absolute  superiority.  Incompe- 
tence, when  it  flatters  the  passions,  can  always 
find  a  greater  incompetence  to  approve  of  it.  In- 
deed, some  people  would  have  regarded  the  Tower 
of  Babel  as  the  best  academy  of  eloquence  on 
account  of  the  variety  of  oratorical  methods  pre- 
vailing there. 

It  is  thus  that  the  imagination  of  our  time  has 
relapsed  into  barbarism.  But  discipline  of  the 
heart  and  fancy  is  always  so  rare  a  thing  that 
the  neglect  of  it  need  not  be  supposed  to  involve 
any  very  terrible  or  obvious  loss.  The  triumphs 
of  reason  have  been  few  and  partial  at  any  time, 
and  perfect  works  of  art  are  almost  unknown. 
The  failure  of  art  and  reason,  because  their  prin- 
ciple is  ignored,  is  therefore  hardly  more  conspicu- 
ous than  it  was   when  their  principle,   although 


/ 


174  POETRY  AND  EELIGION 


perhaps  acknowledged,  was  misunderstood  or  dis- 
y    obeyed.     Indeed,  to  one  who  fixes  his  eye  on  the 
ideal  goal,  the  greatest  art  often  seems  the  great- 
est failure,  because  it  alone  reminds  him  of  what 
it  should  have  been.     Trivial  stimulations  coming 
from  vulgar  objects,  on  the  contrary,  by  making  us 
forget  altogether  the  possibility  of  a  deep  satisfac- 
tion, often  succeed  in  interesting  and  in  winning 
applause.      The  pleasure  they  give  us  is  so  brief 
and  superficial  that  the  wave  of  essential  disap- 
pointment which  would  ultimately   drown   it  has 
not  time  to  rise  from  the  heart. 
\        The  poetry  of  barbarism  is  not  without  its  charm. 
It  can  play  with  sense  and  passion  the  more  readily 
4      and  freely  in  that  it  does  not  aspire  to  subordinate 
them  to  a  clear  thought  or  a  tenable  attitude  of  the 
will.     It  can  impart  the  transitive  emotions  which 
it  expresses ;  it  can  find  many  partial  harmonies  of 
mood  and  fancy;   it  can,  by  virtue  of  its  red-hot 
irrationality,  utter  wilder  cries,  surrender  itself  and 
us  to  more  absolute  passion,  and  heap  up  a  more  in-  '^  ^ 
X  .^  discriminate  wealth  of  images  than  belong  to  poets 
•  of  seasoned  experience  or  of  heavenly  inspiration. 
Irrational  stimulation  may  tire  u^  in  the  end,  but 
it  excites  us  in  the  beginning ;  and  how  many  con- 
ventional poets,  tender  and  prolix,  have  there  not 
.   been,  who  tire  us  now  without  ever  having  excited 
N    anybody  ?     ^The  power  to  stimulate  is  the  begin- » 
ning  of  ^reatn^s,  and  when  the   barbarous   poet^^ 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  175 

has  genius,  as  he  well  may  have,  he  stimulates  all 
the  more  powerfully  on  accoiint^f_the  crudity  of 
his  methods  and  the  recklessness  of  his  emotions. 
The  defects  of  such  art  —  lack  of  distinction,  ab- 
sence of  beauty,  confusion  of  ide£Ps,  incapacity 
permanently  to  please  —  will  hardly  be  felt  by  the 
contemporary  public,  if  once,  its  attention  is  ar- 
rested; for  no  poet  is  so  undisciplined  that  he 
will  not  find  many  readers,  if  he  finds  readers  at 
all,  less  disciplined  than  himself^ 

These  considerations  may  perhaps  be  best  en- 
forced by  applying  them  to  two  writers  of  great 
influence  over  the  present  generation  who  seem  to 
illustrate  them  on  different  planes  —  Robert  Brown- 
ing and  Walt  Whitman.  They  are  both  analytic 
poets  —  poets  who  seek  to  reveal  and  express  the  ( 
elemental  as  opposed  to  the  conventional ;  but  the 
dissolution  has  progressed  much  farther  in  Whitman  / 
than  in  Browning,  doubtless  because  Whitman  be- 
gan at  a  much  lower  stage  of  moral  and  intellec- 
tual organization;  for  the  good  will  to  be  radical 
was  present  in  both.  The  elements  to  which 
Browning  reduces  experience  are  still  passions, 
characters,  persons;  Whitman  carries  the  disinte- 
gration further  and  knows  nothing  but  moods  and 
particular  images.  ,  The  world  of  Browning  is  a 
world  of  history  with  civilization  for  its  setting 
and  with  the  conventional  passions  for  its  motive 
forces.     The._jyor1  d  jQL,.lYhitmaii  is.  innocent    of 


176  POETRY   AND   KELIGION 

these  things  and  contains_only  far  simpler  and 
more  chaotic  elements.  In  him  the  barbarism  is 
much  more  pronounced ;  it  is,  indeed,  avowed,  and 
the  "barbaric  yawp"  is  sent  "over  the  roofs  of 
the  world  "  in  full  consciousness  of  its  inarticulate 
character ;  but  in  Browning  the  barbarism  is  no 
less  real  though  disguised  by  a  literary  and  scien- 
tific language,  since  the  passions  of  civilized  life 
with  which  he  deals  are  treated  as  so  many  "  bar- 
baric yawps,"  complex  indeed  in  their  conditions, 
puf&ngs  of  an  intricate  engine,  but  aimless  in  their 
vehemence  and  mere  ebullitions  of  lustiness  in  ad- 
venturous and  profoundly  ungoverned  souls. 
*  Irrationality  on  this  level  is  viewed  by  Browning 
with  the  same  satisfaction  with  which,  on  a  lower 
level,  it  is  viewed  by  Whitman ;  "and  the  admirers 
of  each  hail  it  as  the  secret  of,  a  new  poetry  which 
pierces  to  the  quick  and  awakens  the  imagination 
to  a  new  and  genuine  vitality.  It  is  in  the  re- 
bellion  against  discipline,  in  the  abandonment  of 
the  i(^als  of  ^assic  and  Christian  tradition,  tRat 
this  rejuvenation  is  found!^~Both  poets  represent, 
therefore,  ahJ  are  admired  for  representing,  what 
may  be  called  the  poetry  of  barbarism  in  the  most 
accurate  and  descriptive  sense  of  this  word.  For 
the  barbari^  is  the  man  who^regards  his  passions 
as  their  own^  excuse  for  bmng;  whoaoes~not  3.0- 
mesticate  them  either  by  understanding  their  cause 
or  by  conceiving  their  ideal  goal.     He  is  the  man 


THE   POETRY   OF    BARBARISM  177 

who  does  not  know  his  derivations  nor  perceive, 
his  tendencies,  but  who  merely  feels  and  acts,  valu- 
ing in  his  life  its  force  and  its  filling,  but  being 
careless  of  its  purpose  and  its  form.  His  delight 
is  in  abundance  and  vehemence ;  his  art,  like  his 
life,  shows  an  exclusive  respect  for  quantity  and 
splendour  of  materials.  His  scorn  for  what  is 
poorer  and  weaker  than  himself  is  only  surpassed 
by  his  ignorance  of  what  is  higher. 

II 

WALT    WHITMAN 

The  works  of  Walt  Whitman  offer  an  extreme 
illustration  of  this  phase  of  genius,  both  by  their 
form  and  by  their  substance.  It  was  the  singu- 
larity of  his  literary  form  —  the  challenge  it  threw 
to  the  conventions  of  verse  and  of  language  -^  that 
first  gave  Whitman  notoriety :  but  this  notoriety  has 
become  fame,  because  those  incapacities  and  sole- 
cisms which  glare  at  us  from  his  pages  are  only 
the  obverse  of  a  profound  inspiration  and  of  a 
genuine  courage.  Even  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his 
style  have  a  side  which  is  not  mere  peversity  or 
affectation ;  the  order  of  his  words,  the  processioi\^ 
of  his  images,  reproduce  the  method  of  a  rich,  spon-V 
taneous,  absolutely  lazy '  fancy.  In  most  poets ) 
such  a  natural  order  is  modified  by  various  gov- 
erning motives  —  the  thought,  the   metrical  form, 

N 


178  POETEY  AND   BELIGION 

the  echo  of  other  poems  in  the  memory.  By  Walt 
Whitman  these  conventional  influences  are  reso- 
lutely banished.  We  find  the  swarms  of  men  and 
objects  rendered  as  they  might  strike  the  retina  in 
a  sort  of  waking  dream.  It  is  the  most  sincere 
V  .  possible  confession  of  the  lowest  —  I  mean  the 
most  primitive  —  type  of  perception.  All  ancient 
poets  are  sophisticated  in  comparison  and  give 
proof  of  longer  intellectual  and  moral  training. 
Walt  Whitman  has  gone  back  to  the  innocent 
style  of  Adam,  when  the  animals  filed  before  him 
one  by  one  and  he  called  each  of  them  by  its  name. 
In  fact,  the  influences  to  which  Walt  Whitman 
was  subject  were  as  favourable  as  possible  to  the 
imaginary  experiment  of  beginning  the  world  over 
y  >  again.  Liberalism  and  transcendentalism  both 
\j  harboured  some  illusions  on  that  score;  and  they 
were  in  the  air  which  our  poet  breathed.  Moreover 
he  breathed  this  air  in  America,  where  the  newness 
of  the  material  environment  made  it  easier  to 
ignore  the  fatal  antiquity  of  human  nature.  When 
he  afterward  became  aware  that  there  was  or  had 
been  a  world  with  a  history,  he  studied  that  world 
with  curiosity  and  spoke  of  it  not  without  a  certain 
shrewdness.  But  he  still  regarded  it  as  a  foreign 
world  and  imagined,  as  not  a  few  Americans  have 
done,  that  his  own  world  was  a  fresh  creation, 
not  amenable  to  the  same  laws  as  the  old.  The 
difference  in  the  conditions   blinded  him,  in  his 


THE  POETKY   OF  BARBARISM  179 

merely  sensuous  apprehension,  to  the  identity  of 
the  principles. 

His  parents  were  farmers  in  central  Long  Island 
and  his  early  years  were  spent  in  that  district. 
The  family  seems  to  have  been  not  too  prosperous 
and  somewhat  nomadic ;  Whitman  himself  drifted 
through  boyhood  without  much  guidance.  We 
find  him  now  at  school,  now  helping  the  labourers 
at  the  farms,  now  wandering  along  the  beaches  of 
Long  Island,  finally  at  Brooklyn  working  in  an 
apparently  desultory  way  as  a  printer  and  some- 
times as  a  writer  for  a  local  newspaper.  He  must 
have  read  or  heard  something,  at  this  early  period, 
of  the  English  classics ;  his  style  often  betrays  the 
deep  effect  made  upon  him  by  the  grandiloquence 
of  the  Bible,  of  Shakespeare,  and  of  Milton.  But 
his  chief  interest,  if  we  may  trust  his  account,  was 
already  in  his  own  sensations.  The  aspects  of 
Nature,  the  forms  and  habits  of  animals,  the  sights 
of  cities,  the  movement  and  talk  of  common  people, 
were  his  constant  delight.  His  mind  was  flooded 
with  these  images,  keenly  felt  and  afterward  to  be^ 
vividly  rendered  with  bold  strokes  of  realism  and 
imgiginatipn. 

Many  poets  have  had  this  faculty  to  seizQ  the 
elementary  aspects  of  things,  but  none  has  had 
it  so  exclusively;  with  Whitman  the  surface  is^ 
absolutely  all  and  the  underlying  structure,  i^ 
without   interest   and    almost    without   existence. 


180  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

He  had  had  no  education  and  his  natural  de- 
light in  imbibing  sensations  had  not  been  trained 
to  the  uses  of  practical  or  theoretical  intelligence. 
He  basked  in  the  sunshine  of  perception  and 
wallowed  in  the  stream  of  his  own  sensibility,  as 
later  at  Camden  in  the  shallows  of  his  favourite 
brook.  Even  during  the  civil  war,  when  he  heard 
the  drum-taps  so  clearly,  he  could  only  gaze  at  the 
picturesque  and  terrible  aspects  of  the  struggle, 
and  linger  among  the  wounded  day  after  day  with 
a  canine  devotion ;  he  could  not  be  aroused  either 
to  clear  thought  or  to  positive  action.  So  also  in 
his  poems ;  a  multiplicity  of  images  pass  before  him 
and  he  yields  himself  to  each  in  turn  with  absolute 
passivity.  '  The  world  has  no  inside ;  it  is  a  phan- 
tasmagoria of  continuous  visions,  vivid,  impressive, 
but  monotonous  and  hard  to  distinguish  in  memory, 
like  the  waves  of  the  sea  or  the  decorations  of  some 
barbarous  temple,  sublime  only  by  the  infinite  ag- 
y  \  gregation  of  parts. 

This  abundance  of  detail  without  organization, 
this  wealth  of  perceptionjwithout  intelligence  and 
of  JmagiBation  jadthoaiL-taste,  makes  the  singular- 
ity of  Whitman's  genius.  Full  of  sympathy  and 
receptivity,  with  a  wonderful  gift  of  graphic 
characterization  and  an  occasional  rare  grandeur 
of  diction,  he  fills  us  with  a  sense  of  the  individu- 
ality and  the  universality  of  what  he  describes  — 
it  is  a  drop  in  itself  yet  a  drop   in  the   ocean. 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  181 

The  absence  of  ajix.  principle  of  selection  or  of 
a  sustained  style  enables  him  to  render  aspects 
of*tEiiigs  and  of  emotion  which  would  have  eluded 
a  trained  writer.  He  is,  therefore,  interesting  even 
where  he  is  grotesque  or  perverse.  He  has  accom- 
plished, by  the  sacrifice  of  almost  every  other  good 
quality,  something  never  so  ;well  done  before. 
He  has  approached  common  life  without  bring- 
ing in  his  mind  any  higher  standard  by  which  to 
criticise  it;  he  has  seen  it,  not  in  contrast  with 
an  ideal,  but  as  the  expression  of  forces  more 
indeterminate  and  elementary  than  itself;  and  the 
vulgar,  in  this  cosmic  setting,  has  appeared  to  him 
sublime. 

There  is  clearly  some  analogy  between  a  mass  of 
images  without  structure  and  the  notion  of  an 
absolute  democracy.  Whitman,  inclined  by  his 
genius  and  habits  to  see  life  without  relief  or  organ- 
ization, believed  that  his  inclination  in  this  respect 
corresponded  with  the  spirit  of  his  age  and  coun- 
try, and  that  Nature  and  society,  at  least  in  the 
United  States,  were  constituted  after  the  fashion 
of  his  own  mind.  Being  the  poet  of  the  average 
man,  he  wished  all  men  to  be  specimens  of  that 
average,  and  being  the  poet  of  a  fluid  Nature,  he 
believed  that  Nature  was  or  should  be  a  formless 
flux.  This  personal  bias  of  Whitman's  was  further 
encouraged  by  the  actual  absence  of  distinction  in 
his  immediate  environment.     Surrounded  by  ugly 


182  POETKY  AND   RELIGION 

things  and  common  people,  he  felt  himself  happy, 
ecstatic,  overflowing  with  a  kind  of  patriarchal 
love.  He  accordingly  came  to  think  that  there  was 
a  spirit  of  the  New  World  which  he  embodied,  and 
which  was  in  complete  opposition  to  that  of  the 
Old,  and  that  a  literature  upon  novel  principles  was 
needed  to  express  and  strengthen  this  American 
spirit. 

Democracy  was   not  to  be  merely   a  constitu- 
tional device  for  the  better  government  of  given 
nations,  not  merely  a  movement  for  the  material 
improvement  of  the  lot  of  the  poorer  classes.     It 
was  to  be  a  social  and  a  moral  democracy  and  to 
j  involve  an  actual  equality  among  all  men.     What- 
ever kept  them  apart  and  made  it  impossible  for 
them  to  be  messmates  together  was  to  be  discarded.  \ 
.  The  literature  of  democracy  was  to  ignore  all  ex- 
\  traordinary  gifts  of  genius  or  virtue,  all  distinction 
drawn  even  from  great  passions  or  romantic  adven- 
tures.     In  Whitman's  works,  in  which  this  new 
literature  is  foreshadowed,  there  is  accordingly  not  ,1 
V  a  single  character  nor  a  single  story.      His  only 
Nhero  is  Myself,  the  "single  separate  person,"  en- 
dowed with  the  primary  impulses,  with  health,  and 
with   sensitiveness   to  the   elementary  aspects   of 
Nature.      The  perfect  man  of  the  future,  the  pro- 
lific begetter  of  other  perfect  men,  is  to  work  with 
his  hands,  chanting  the  poems  of  some  future  Walt, 
some  ideally  democratic  bard.     Women  are  to  have 


r 

i 


THE    POETJilY    OF   BARBARISM  183 

as  nearly  as  possible  the  same  character  as  men: 
the  emphasis  is  to  pass  from  family  life  and  local 
ties  to  the  friendship  of  comrades'and  the  general 
brotherhood  of  man.  Men  are  to  be  vigorous,  com- 
fortable, sentimental,  and  irresponsible. 

This  dream  is,  of  course,  unrealized  and  unreal- 
izable, in  America  as  elsewhere.  Undeniably  there 
are  in  America  many  suggestions  of  such  a  societj^ 
and  such  a  national  character.  But  the  growing 
complexity  _aiid  fixity_jaf-.  institutions  .necessarily 
tends  to  obscure  these  traits  of  ^  primitive  and 
crude  deniocfacy.  What  Whitman  seized  upon  as 
the  promise  of  the  future  was  in  reality  the  sur- 
vival of  the  past.  He  sings  the  song  of  pioneers, 
but  it  is  in  the  nature  of  the  pioneer  that  the 
greater  his  success  the  quicker  must  be  his  trans- 
formation into  something  different.  When  Whit- 
man made  the  initial  and  amorphous  phase  of 
society  his  ideal,  he  became  the  prophet  of  a  lost 
cause.  That  cause  was  lost,  not  merely  when 
wealth  and  intelligence  began  to  take  shape  in  the 
American  Commonwealth,  but  it  was  lost  at  the 
very  foundation  of  the  world,  when  those  laws  of 
evolution  were  established  which  Whitman,  like 
Bousseau,  failed  to  understand.  If  we  may  trust 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  these  laws  involve  a  passage 
from  the  homogeneous  to  the  heterogeneous,  and* 
a  constant  progress  at  once  in  differentiation  and .,  -  ' 
in  organization  —  all,  in  a  word,  that  Whitman  sys-  ^ 


184  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

tematically  deprecated  or  ignored.  He  is  surely 
not  tlie  spokesman  of  the  tendencies  of  his  country, 
although  he  describes  some  aspects  of  its  past  and 
present  condition :  nor  does  he  appeal  to  those  whom 
he  describes,  but  rather  to  the  dilettanti  he  despises. 
He  is  regarded  as  representative  chiefly  by  foreign- 
ers, who  look  for  some  gi'otesque  expression  of  the 
genius  of  so  young  and  prodigious  a  people. 

Whitman,  it  is  toie^  loved. jind.. comprehended 
men;  but  this  love  and  comprehension  had  the 
same  limits  as  his  love  and  comprehension  of 
Nature.  He  observed  truly  and  responded  to  his 
observation  with  genuine  and  pervasive  emotion. 
A  great  gregariousness,  an  innocent  tolerance  of 
moral  weakness,  a  genuine  admiration  for  bodily 
health  and  strength,  made  him  bubble  over  with 
affection  for  the  generic  human  creature.  Inca- 
pable of  an  ideal  passion,  he  was  full  of  the  niilk  of 
human  kindness.  Yet,  for  all  his  acquaintance 
with  the  ways  and  thoughts  of  the  common  man 
of  his  choice,  he  did  not  truly  understand  him. 
For  to  understand  people  is  to  go  much  deeper 
than  they  go  themselves ;  to  penetrate  to  their 
characters  and  disentangle  their  inmost  ideals. 
Whitman's  insight  into  man  did  not  go  beyond  a 
sensuous  sympathy;  it  consisted  in  a  vicarious 
satisfaction  in  their  pleasures,  and  an  instinctive 
love  of  their  persons.  It  never  approached  a 
scientific  or  imaginative  knowledge  of  their  hearts. 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  185 

Therefore  Whitman  failed  radically  in  his 
dearest  ambition:  he 3_n_ne.Yex_be_a.  poet  of  the 
people.  YoT  the  people,  like  the  early  races  whose 
poetry  was  ideal,  are  natural  believers  in  perfection. 
They  have  no  doubts  about  the  absolute  desirability 
of  wealth  and  learning  and  power,  none  about  the 
worth  of  pure  goodness  and  pure  love.  Their 
chosen  poets,  if  they  have  any,  will  be  always  those 
who  have  known  how  to  paint  th£s©4deals  in  lively 
even  if  in  gaudy  colours.  Nothing  is  farther  froni~T 
the  common  people  than  the  corrupt  desire  to  be  / 
primitive.  They  instinctively  look  toward  a  more 
exalted  life,  which  they  imagine  to  be  full  of  dis- 
tinction and  pleasure,  and  the  idea  of  that  brighter 
existence  fills  them  with  hope  or  with  envy  or  with 
humble  admiration.  • 

If  the  people  are  ever  won  over  to  hostility 
to  such  ideals,  it  is  only  because  they  are  cheated 
by  demagogues  who  tell  them  that  if  all  the 
flowers  of  civilization  were  destroyed  its  fruits 
would  become  more  abundant.  A  greater  share 
of  happiness,  people  think,  would  fall  to  their 
lot  could  they  destroy  everything  beyond  their 
own  possible  possessions.  But  they  are  made 
thus  envious  and  ignoble  only  by  a  deception: 
what  they  really  desire  is  an  ideal  good  for  them- 
selves which  they  are  told  they  may  secure  by  de- 
priving others  of  their  preeminence.  Their  hope 
is  always  to  enjoy  perfect  satisfaction  themselves ; 


186  POETRY   AND   RELIGIOK 

and  therefore  a  poet  who  loves  the  picturesque 
aspects  of  labour  and  vagrancy  will  hardly  be 
the  poet  of  the  poor.  He  may  have  described  their 
figure  and  occupation,  in  neither  of  which  they  are 
much  interested ;  he  will  not  have  read  their  souls. 
They  will  prefer  to  him  any  sentimental  story-teller, 
any  sensational  dramatist,  any  moralizing  poet ;  for 
they  are  hero-worshippers  by  temperament,  and  are 
too  wise  or  too  unfortunate  to  be  much  enamoured 
of  themselves  or  of  the  conditions  of  their  existence. 
Fortunately,  the  political  theory  that  makes 
Whitman's  principle  of  literary  prophecy  and 
criticism  does  not  always  inspire  his  chants,  nor 
is  it  presented,  even  in  his  prose  works,  quite 
bare  and  unadorned.  In  "  Democratic  Vistas  "  we 
find  it  clothed  with  something  of  the  same  poetic 
passion  and  lighted  up  with  the  same  flashes  of 
intuition  which  we  admire  in  the  poems.  Even 
there  the  temperament  is  finer  than  the  ideas  and 
the  poet  wiser  than  the  thinker.  His  ultimate 
appeal  is  really  to  something  more  primitive  and 
general  than  any  social  aspirations,  to  something 
more  elementary  than  an  ideal  of  any  kind.  He 
speaks  to  those  minds  and  to  those  moods  in  which 
sensuality  is  touched  with  mysticism.  When  the 
intellect  is  in  abeyance,  when  we  would  "  turn  and 
live  with  the  animals,  they  are  so  placid  and  self- 
contained,"  when  we  are  weary  of  conscience  and 
of  ambition,  and  would  yield  ourselves  for  a  while 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  187 

to  the  dream  of  sense,  Walt  Whitman  is  a  wel- 
come companion.  The  images  he  arouses  in  us, 
fresh,  full  of  light  and  health  and  of  a  kind  of 
frankness  and  beauty,  are  prized  all  the  more  at 
such  a  time  because  they  are  not  choice,  but  drawn 
perhaps  from  a  hideous  and  sordid  environment. 
For  this  circumstance  makes  theiji^aJbetter^ieans 
of  escape_foom_convention  and  from  that  fatigue 
and  despair  which  lurk  not  far^fiii^ath  the  sur- 
f ac^  of  _i^n ventional  life.  In  casting  off  with 
self-assurance  and  a  sense  of  fresh  vitality  the 
distinctions  of  tradition  and  reason  a  man  may 
feel,  as  he  sinks  back  comfortably  to  a  lower  level 
6f  sense  and  instinct,  that  he  is  returning  to 
Nature  or  escaping  into  the  infinite.  Mysticism 
makes  us  proud  and  happy  to  renounce  the  work 
of  intelligence,  both  in  thought  and  in  life,  and 
persuades  us  that  we  become  divine  by  remaining 
imperfectly  human.  Walt  Whitman  gives  a  new 
expression  to  this  ancient  and  multiform  tendency. 
He  feels  his  own  cosmic  justification  and  he  would 
lend  the  sanction  of  his  inspiration  t©  all  loafers 
and  holiday-makers.  He  would  be  the  congenial 
patron  of  farmers  and  factoi-y  hands  in  their  crude 
pleasures  and  pie'ties,  as  Pan  was  the  patron  of 
the  shepherds  of  Arcadia:  for  he  is  sure  that  in 
spite  of  his  hairiness  and  animality,  the  gods  will 
acknowledge  him  as  one  of  themselves  and  smile 
upon  him  from  the  serenity  of  Olympus. 

V 


188  POETliY   AND   KELIGION 


III 

BOBERT   BROWNING 

If  we  would  do  justice  to  Browning's  work  as  a 
human  document,  and  at  the  same  time  perceive  its 
relation  to  the  rational  ideals  of  the  imagination 
and  to  that  poetry  which  passes  into  religion,  we 
must  keep,  as  in  the  case  of  Whitman,  two  things 
in  mind.  One  is  the  genuineness  of  the  achieve- 
ment, the  sterling  quality  of  the  vision  and  inspira- 
tion; these  are  their  own  justification  when  we 
approach  them  from  below  and  regard  them  as 
manifesting  a  more  direct  or  impassioned  grasp 
of  experience  than  is  given  to  mildly  blatant, 
convention-ridden  minds.  The  other  thing  to  re- 
member is  the  short  distance  to  which  this  compre- 
hension is  carried,  its  failure  to  approach  any 
finality,  or  to  achieve  a  recognition  even  of  the 
traditional  ideals  of  poetry  and  religion. 
r~  In  the  case  of  Walt  Whitman  such  a  failure  will 
\  be  generally  felt ;  it  is  obvious  that  both  his  music 
( and  his  philosophy  are  those  of  a  barbarian,  nay, 
/  almost  of  a  savage.  Accordingly  there  is  need  of 
dwelling  rather  on  the  veracity  and  simple  dignity 
of  his  thought  and  art,  on  their  expression  of  an 
order  of  ideas  latent  in  all  better  experience.  But 
in  the  case  of  Browning  it  is  the  success  that  is 
obvious   to   most  people.      Apart   from   a   certain 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  .189 

superficial  grotesqueness_  to  which  we  are  soon 
accustomed,  he  easily  _arouses_  and  engages  the 
reader  by  the  pithiness  of  his  phrase,  the  volume  — 
of  his  passion,  the  vigour  of  his  moral  judgment, 
the  liveliness  of  his^historical  fancy.  It  is  obvious 
that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  great  writer,  of 
a  great  imaginative  force,  of  a  master  in  the  ex- 
pression of  emotion.  What  is  perhaps  not  so  obvi-  -^^j 
ous,  but  no  less  true,  is  that  we  are  in  the  presence 
of  a  barbaric  genius,  of  a  truncatedjmagination^  of 
a  thought  and  an  art  inchoate  and  ill-digested,  of  a 


volcanic  eruption  that  tosses  itself   quite  blindly 
and  ineffectually  into  the  sky.  _ 

The  points  of  comparison  by  which  this  becomes 
clear  are  perhaps  not  in  every  one's  mind,  although 
they  are  merely  the  elements  of  traditional  culture, 
aesthetic  and  moral.  Yet  even  without  reference  to 
ultimate  ideals,  one  may  notice  in  Browning  many 
superficial  signs  of  that  deepest  of  all  failures,  the  ; 
failure  in  rationality  and  the  indifference  tgjer- 
f gction.^^  Such  a  sign  is  the  turgid  style,  weight}^ 
without  nobility,  pointed  without  naturalness  or 
precision.  Another  sign  is  the  "realism"  of  the- 
personages,  who,  quite  like  men  and  women  in\ 
actual  life,  are  always  displaying  traits  of  char- 
acter and  never  attaining  charactei^^as  a^  whole. 
Other  hints  might  be  found  in  the  structure  of 
the  poems,  where  the  dramatic  substance  does  not 
achieve  a  dramatic  form ;  in  the  metaphysical  dis- 


190  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

cussion,  with  its  confused  prolixity  and  absence 
of  result;  in  the  moral  ideal,  where  all  energies 
figure  without  their  ultimate  purposes  j  in  the 
religion,  which  breaks  off  the  expression  of  this 
life  in  the  middle,  and  finds  in  that  suspense  an 
argument  for  immortality.  In  all  this,  and  much 
more  that  might  be  recalled,  a  person  coming  to 
•  Browning  with  the  habits  of  a  cultivated  mind 
might  see  evidence  of  some  profound  incapacity  in 
the  poet ;  but  more  careful  reflection  is  necessary 
to  understand  the  nature  of  this  incapacity,  its 
cause,  and  the  peculiar  accent  which  its  presence 
gives  to  those  ideas  and  impulses  which  Browning 
stimulates  in  us. 

There  is  the  more  reason  for  developing  this 
criticism  (which  might  seem  needlessly  hostile  and 
which  time  and  posterity  will  doubtless  make  in 
their  own  quiet  and  decisive  fashion)  in  that 
Browning  did  not  keep  within  the  sphere  of 
drama  and  analysis,  where  he  was  strong,  but 
allowed  his  own  temperament  and  opinions  to 
vitiate  his  representation  of  life,  so  that  he  some- 
times ^turned  the  expression  of  a  violent  passion 
intothe_lastword  of  what  he  thought  a  religioji^ 
He  had  a  didactic  vein,  a  habifcofjudging^tiie 
spectacle  he  evoked  and  of  .loading  the  passions  he 
"S^pictedTwith  his  visible  syjnpathy  or  scorn. 

Now  a  chief  support  of  Browning's  popularity  is 
that  he  is,  for  many,  an  initiator  into  the  deeper 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  191 

mysteries  of  passion,  a  means  of  escaping  from  the 
moral  poverty  of  their  own  lives  and  of  feeling  the 
rhythm  and  compulsion  of  the  general  striving. 
He  figures,  therefore,  distinctly  as  a  prophet,  as  a 
bearer  of  glad  tidings,  and  it  is  easy  for  those  who 
hail  him  as  such  to  imagine  that,  knowing  the 
labour  of  life  so  well,  he  must  know  something 
also  of  its  fruits,  and  that  in  giving  us  the  feeling 
of  existence,  he  is  also  giving  us  its  meaning. 
There  is  serious  danger  that  a  mind  gathering 
from  his  pages  the  raw  materials  of  truth,  the  un- 
threshed  harvest  of  reality,  may  take  him  for  a 
philosopher,  for  a  rationalizer  of  what  he  describes. 
Awakening  may  be  mistaken  for  enlightenment, 
and  the  galvanizing^_of___torpT^  fipnfia.ti(>ri«^  a.Tifl  \m. 
pulses  for  wisdom. 


Against  such  fatuity  reason  should  raise  her 
voice.  The  vital  and  historic  forces  that  produce 
illusions  of  this  sort  in  large  groups  of  men  are 
indeed  beyond  the -control  of  criticism.  The  ideas 
of  passion  are  more  vivid  than  those  of  memory, 
until  they  become  memories  in  turn.  They  must 
be  allowed  to  fight  out  their  desperate  battle 
against  the  laws  of  Nature  and  reason.  But  it 
is  worth  while  in  the  meantime,  for  the  sake  of  the 
truth  and  of  a  just  philosophy,  to  meet  the  varying 
though  perpetual  charlatanism  of  the  world  with  a 
steady  protest.  As  soon  as  Browning  is  proposed 
to  us  as  a  leader,  as  soon  as  we  are  asked  to  be 


192  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

not  the  occasional  patrons  of  his  art,  but  the  pupils 
of  his  philosophy,  we  have  a  right  to  express  the 
radical  dissatisfaction  which  we  must  feel,  if  we 
are  rational,  with  his  whole  attitude  and  temper 
of  mind. 

The  great  dramatists  have  seldom  dealt  with 
perfectly  virtuous  characters.  The  great  poets 
have  seldom  represented  mythologies  that  would 
bear  scientific  criticism.  But  by  an  instinct  which 
constituted  their  greatness  they  have  cast  these 
mixed  materials  furnished  by  life  into  forms  con- 
genial to  the  specific  principles  of  their  art,  and 
by  this  transformation  they  have  made  acceptable 
in  the  aesthetic  sphere  things  that  in  the  sphere 
of  reality  were  evil  or  imperfect:  in  a  word, 
their  works  have  been  beautiful  as  works  of  art. 
Or,  if  their  genius  exceeded  that  of  the  technical 
poet  and  rose  to  prophetic  intuition,  they  have 
known  how  to  create  ideal  characters,  not  pos- 
sessed, perhaps,  of  every  virtue  accidentally  needed 
in  this  world,  but  possessed  of  what  is  ideally 
better,  of  internal  greatness  and  perfection.  They 
have  also  known  how  to  select  and  reconstruct 
their  mythology  so  as  to  make  it  a  true  interpreta- 
tion of  moral  life.  When  we  read  the  maxims  of 
lago,  FalstafF,  or  Hamlet,  we  are  delighted  if  the 
thought  strikes  us  as  true,  but  we  are  not  less  de- 
lighted if  it  strikes  us  as  false.  These  characters 
are  not  presented   to  us  in  order  to  enlarge  our 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  193 

capacities  of  passion  nor  in  order  to  justify  them- 
selves as  processes  of  redemption;  they  are  there, 
clothed  in  poetry  and  imbedded  in  plot,  to  entertain 
us  with  their  imaginable  feelings  and  their  interest- 
ing errors.  The  poet,  without  being  especially  a 
philosopher,  stands  by  virtue  of  his  superlative 
genius  on  the  plane  of  universal  reason,  far  above 
the  passionate  experience  which  he  overlooks  and 
on  which  he  reflects;  and  he  raises  us  for  the 
moment  to  his  own  level,  to  send  us  back  again,  if 
not  better  endowed  for  practical  life,  at  least  not 
unacquainted  with  speculation. 

With  Browning  the  case  is  essentially  different. 
When  his  heroes  are  blinded  by  passion  and  warped 
by  circumstance,  as  they  almost  always  are,  he 
does  not  describe  the  jact  from  the  vantage-ground 
of  the  intellect  and  invite  us  to  look  at  it  from  that 


point  of  view.  On  the  contrary,  his  art  is  all  self-_ 
expression  or  satire^  For  the  most  part  his  hero, 
like  Whitman^s,  is  himself;  not  appearing,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  American  bard,  in  puris  naturalibuSj 
but  masked  in  all  sorts  of  historical  and  romantic 
finery.  Sometimes,  however,  the  personage,  like 
Guido  in  "  The  Eing  and  the  Book"  or  the  "  frus- 
trate ghosts  "  of  other  poems,  is  merely  a  Marsyas, 
shown  flayed  and  quivering  to  the  greater  glory 
of  the  poet's  ideal  Apollo.  The  impulsive  utter- 
ances and  the  crudities  of  most  of  the  speakers 
are  passionately  adopted  by  the  poet  as  his  own. 


194  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

He  thu s  peryertsjwhat^mightjiave  been  a  triumph 
jQf  iDiaginationjnto.A-faiIure  of  reason. 

This  circumstance  has  much  to  do  with  the  fact 
that  Browning,  in  spite  of  his  extraordinary  gift 
for  expressing  emotion,  has  hardly  produced  works 
purely  and  unconditionally  delightful.  _They_not 
only  portraypassion,  which  is  interesting,  but  they 
betray  it,  which  is  odious.     His  art  was  still  in  thg^ 


service^f  the  will._  He  had  ^t^attained,  in  study- 
ing the  beauty  of  things,  that  detachment  of  the 
phenomenon,  that  love  of  the  form  for  its  own  sake, 
which  is  the  secret  of  contemplative  satisfaction. 
Therefore,  the  lamentable  accidents  of  his  person- 
ality and  opinions,  in  themselves  no  worse  than 
those  of  other  mortals,  passed  into  his  art.  He 
did  not  seek  to  elude  them  :  he  had  no  free  specu- 
lative  faculty  to  dominate  them  by.  Or,  to  put 
the  same  thing  differently,  he  was  too  much  in 
earnest  in  his^ctiong^  he_threw  himself  toqjmrje^ 
servedly  into  his  creations^  His  imagination,  like 
the  imagination  we  have  in  dreams,  was  merely  a 
vent  for  personal  preoccupations.  His  art  was  in- 
spired by  purposes  Jesssimple  and  universal  than 
the  ends  of  imagination  itseTf"~Jiis_play  of  mind 
consequentlY  couldnot  be  free  or  pure^,^  The  cre- 
ative impulse  could  not  reach  its  goal  or  manifest 
in  any  notable  degree  its  own  organic  ideal. 
\  We  may  illustrate  these  assertions  by  consider- 
ing Browning's   treatment  of  the  passion  of  love, 


THE  POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  195 

a  passion  to  which  he  gives  great  prominence  and 
in  which  he  finds  the  highest  significance. 

Love  is  depicted  by  Browning  with  truth,  with 
vehemence,  and  with  the  constant  conviction  that 
it  is  the  supreme  thing  in  life.  The  great  variety 
of  occasions  in  which  it  appears  in  his  pages  and 
the  different  degrees  of  elaboration  it  receives, 
leave  it  always  of  the  same  quality  —  the^  quality 
of  passion.  It  never  sinks  into  sensuality;  in 
spite  of  its  frequent  extreme  crudeness,  it  is  al- 
ways, in  Browning's  hands,  a  passion  of  the  im- 
agination,  ib  is  always  love.  On  the  other  hand 
it  never  rises  into  contemplation :  mingled  as  it 
may  be  with  friendship,  with  religion,  or  with 
various  forms  of  natural  tenderness,  it  always 
remains_a_passion ;  it  always  remains  a  personal 
impulse,  a  hypnotization^  with  another  person  for 
its  object  or  its  cause.  Kept  within  these  limits 
it  is  represented,  in  a  series  of  powerful  sketches, 
which  are  for  most  readers  the  gems  of  the  Brown- 
ing gallery,  as  the  last  word  of  experience,  the 
highest  phase  of  human  life. 

"  The  woman  yonder,  there's  no  use  in  life 
But  just  to  obtain  her  !     Heap  earth's  woes  in  one 
And  bear  them  —  make  a  pile  of  all  earth's  joys 
And  spurn  them,  as  they  help  or  help  not  this  ; 
Only,  obtain  her  ! " 

"  When  I  do  come,  she  will  speak  not,  she  will  stand, 
Either  hand 


196  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

On  my  shoulder,  give  her  eyes  the  first  embrace 

Of  my  face, 
Ere  we  rush,  ere  we  extinguish  sight  and  speech 

Each  on  each.  .  .  . 
O  heart,  0  blood  that  freezes,  blood  that  burns  1 

Earth's  returns 
For  whole  centuries  of  folly,  noise,  and  sin — 

Shut  them  in  — 
With  their  triumphs  and  their  follies  and  the  rest. 

Love  is  best." 

In  the  piece  called  "  In  a  Gondola "  the  lady  says 
to  her  lover:  — 

"  Heart  to  heart 
And  lips  to  lips  !    Yet  once  more,  ere  we  part. 
Clasp  me  and  make  me  thine,  as  mine  thou  art." 

And  he,  after  being  surprised  and  stabbed  in  her 
arms,  replies :  — 

"  It  was  ordained  to  be  so,  sweet !  —  and  best 
Comes  now,  beneath  thine  eyes,  upon  thy  breast : 
Still  kiss  me  !    Care  not  for  the  cowards  ;  care 
Only  to  put  aside  thy  beauteous  hair 
My  blood  will  hurt !    The  Threo  I  do  not  scorn 
To  death,  because  they  never  lived,  but  I 
Have  lived  indeed,  and  so  —  (yet  one  more  kiss)  — 
can  die." 

We  are  not  allowed  to  regard  these  expressions 
as  the  cries  of  souls  blinded  by  the  agony  of  pas- 
sion and  lust.  Browning  unmistakably  adopts  them 
as  expressing  his  own  highest  intuitions.  He  so 
much  admires  the  strength  of  this  weakness  that 
he  does  not  admit  that  it  is  a  weakness  at  all.     It 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  197 

is  with  the  stmt  of  self-satisfaction,  with  the  sen- 
sation, almost,  of  muscular  Christianity,  that  he 
boasts  of  it  through  the  mouth  of  one  of  his  heroes, 
who  is  explaining  to  his  mistress  the  motive  of  his 
faithful  services  as  a  minister  of  the  queen :  — 

"  She  thinks  there  was  more  cause 
In  love  of  power,  high  fame,  pure  loyalty  ? 
Perhaps  she  fancies  men  wear  out  their  lives 
Chasing  such  shades.   .  .  . 
I  worked  because  I  want  you  with  my  soul." 

Readers  of  the  fifth  chapter  of  this  volume 
need  not  be  reminded  here  of  the  contrast  which 
this  method  of  understanding  love  offers  to  that 
adopted  by  the  real  masters  of  passion  and  imagi- 
nation. .They  began  with  that  crude  emotion  with 
which  Browning  ends;  they  lived  it  down^  they 
exalted  it  by  thought,  they  extracted  the  pure  gold 
of  it  in  a  long  purgation  of  discipline  and  suffering. 
The  fierce  paroxysm  which  for  him  is  heaven,  was 
for  them  the  proof  that  heaven  cannot  be  found  on 
earth,  that  the  value  of  experience  is  not  in  expe- 
rience itself  but  in  the  ideals  which  it  reveals.    The 


intense,  voluminous  emotion,  the  sudden,  over: 
whelming  self -surrender_Jn  which  he  rests,  was  for 
them  the  starting-point  of  a  life  of  rational  wor- 
ship, of  an  austere  and  impersonal  religion,  *by 
which  the  fire  of  love,  kindled  for  a  moment  by  the 
sight  of  some  creature,  was  put,  as  it  were,  into  a 
censer,  to  burn  incense  before  every  image  of  the 


198  POETRY   AND   BELIGION 

Highest  Good.  Thus  love  ceased  to  be  a  passion 
and  became  the  energy  of  contemplation:  it  dif- 
fused over  the  universe,  natural  and  ideal,  that 
light  of  tenderness  and  that  faculty  of  worship 
which  the  passion  of  love  often  is  first  to  quicken 
in  a  man's  breast. 

Of  this  art,  recommended  by  Plato  and  practised 
in  the  Christian  Church  by  all  adepts  of  the  spirit- 
ual life.  Browning  knew  absolutely  nothing.  About 
the  object  of  love  he  had  no  misgivings.  What 
could  the  object  be  except  somebody  or  other  ?  The  ^ 
importajitthing  was  to  love  intensely  and  to  love 
often.  ..  ^Jleremained  in  the  phenomenal  sphere: 
he  was  a  lover  of  experiencej  the  ideal  did  no^ 
exist  for  him.  No  conception  could  be  farther 
from  his  thought  than  the  essential  conception  of 
any  rational  philosophy,  namely,  that  feeling  is  to 
be  treated  as  raw  material  for  thought,  and  that 
the  destiny  of  emotion  is  to  pass  into  objects  which 
shall  contain  all  its  value  while  losing  all  its  form- 
lessness. This  transformation  of  sense  and  emo- 
tion into  objects  agreeable  to  the  intellect,  into 
clear  ideas  and  beautiful  things,  is  the  natural  work 
^of^easoa.;  when  it  has  been  accomplished  very  im- 
perfectly, or  not  at  all,  we  have  a^ba£ba£Ous__mind, 
amind  full  of  chaotic  sensations,  objectless  passions, 
and  undigested_ideas.  Such  a^aind-J^owning's 
was,  to  a  degree  remarkable  in  one_withL-aQ-jdch_a^ 
^ieritage  ©rclvilization. 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  199 

The  nineteenth  century,  as  we  have  already  said,  <• 
has  nourished  the  hope  of  abolishing  the  past  as  a 
force  while  it  studies  it  as  an  object;  and  Brown- 
ing, with  his  fondness  for  a  historical  stage  setting 
and  for  the   gossip   of   history,   rebelled  equally » 
against  the  Pagan  and  the   Christian  discipline. 
The  "  Soul  "  which  he  trusted  in  was  the  barbarous 
soul,  the  "  Spontaneous   Me "  of  his  half-brother 
Whitman.     It  was  a  restless  personal  impulse,  con-  / 
scions  of  obscure  depths  within  itself  which  it  fan-  ] 
cied  to  be  infinite,  and  of  a  certain  vague  sympathy 
with  wind  and  cloud  and  with  the  universal  muta-  I 
tion.      It  was  the  soul  that  might  have  animated 
Attila  and  Alaric  when  they  came  down  into  Italy, 
a  soul  not  incurious  of  the  tawdriness  and  corrup- 
tion of  the  strange  civilization  it  beheld,  but  inca- 
pable of  understanding  its  original  spirit;   a  soul 
maintaining  in  the  presence  of  that  noble,  unappre- 
ciated ruin  all  its  own  lordliness  and  energy,  and 
all  its  native  vulgarity. 

Browning,  who  had  not  had  the  education  tra-  1 
ditional  in  his  own  country,  used  to  say  that  Italy  ( 
had  been  his  university.  But  it  was  a  school  for 
which  he  was  ill  prepared,  and  he  did  not  sit 
under  its  best  teachers.  For  the  superficial  fer- 
ment, the  worldly  passions,  and  the  crimes  of  the 
Italian  Eenaissance  he  had  a  keen  interest  and 
intelligence.  But  Italy  has  been  always  a  civil- 
ized   country,    and    beneath    the    trappings    and 


200  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

suits  of  civilization  which  at  that  particular  time 
it  flaunted  so  gayly^t  preserved  a  civilized  heart 
to  which  Browning's  insight  could  never  penetrate. 
There  subsisted  m  the  best  minds  a  trained  imag- 
ination and  a  cogent  ideal  of  virtue.  Italy  had  a 
religion,  and  that  religion  permeated  all  its  life, 
and  was  the  background  without  which  even  its 
secular  art  and  secular  passions  would  not  be  truly 
intelligible.  The  most  commanding  and  represen- 
tative, the  deepest  and  most  appealing  of  Italian 
natures  are  permeated  with  this  religious  inspira- 
tion. A  Saint  Francis,  a  Dante,  a  Michael  Angelo, 
breathe  hardly  anything  else.  Yet  for  Browning 
these  men  and  what  they  represented  may  be  said 
not  to  have  existed.  He  saw,  he  studied,  and  he 
painted  a  decapitated  Italy.  His  vision  could  not 
mount  so  high  as  her  head. 

One  of  the  elements  of  that  higher  tradition 
which  Browning  was  not  prepared  to  imbibe  was/ 
the  idealization  of  love.  The  passion  he  repreV 
sents  is  lava  hot  from  the  crater,  in  no  way  mouldedl 
smelted,  or  refined.  He  had  no  thought  of  subju4 
gating  impulses  into  the  harmony  of  reason.  He^ 
didnot  master  life,  butwas^mastered  by  it.  Accord:, 
ingly  the  love  he  describes  has  no  wings;  it  issues 
innothing,.  His  lovers  "extinguish  sight  and 
speech,  each  on  each  " ;  sense,  as  he  says  elsewhere, 
drowning  soul.  The  man  in  the  gondola  may  well 
boast  that  he  can  die ;  it  is  the  only  thing  he  can 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  201 

properly  do.  Death  is  the  only  solution  of  a  love. 
that  is  tied  to  its  individual  object  and  inseparable 
l^mTEeHloy  of  passion  and  illusion  within  itself.  J 
Brovvning'^sTiero7""Because  he  has  loved  intensely, 
says  that  he  has  lived;  he  would  be  right,  if  the 
significance  of  life  were  to  be  measured  by  the  inten- 
sity of  the  feeling  it  contained,  and  if  intelligence 
were  not  the  highest  form  of  vitality.  But  had 
that  hero  known  how  to  love  better  and  had  he 
had  enough  spirit  to  dominate  his  love,  he  might 
perhaps  have  been  able  to  carry  away  the  better 
part  of  it  and  to  say  that  lie  could  not  die ;  for  one 
half  of  himself  and  of  his  love  would  have  been 
dead  already  and  the  other  half  would  have  been 
eternal,  having  fed  — 

"  On  death,  that  feeds  on  men ; 
And  death  once  dead,  there's  no  more  dying  then." 

The  irrationality  of  the  passions  which  Browning 
glorifies,  making  them  the  crown  of  life,  is  so  ^ross 
that  at  times  he  cannot  help  perceiving  it. 


"  How  perplexed 
Grows  belief  !    Well,  this  cold  clay  clod 

Was  man's  heart : 
Crumble  it,  and  what  comes  next  ?    Is  it  God?  " 

Yes,  he  will  tell  us.  These  passions  and  follies, 
however  desperate  in  themselves  and  however  vain 
for  the  individual,  are  excellent  as  parts  of  the 
dispensation  of  Providence :  — 


202  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

*'Be  hate  that  fruit  or  love  that  fruit, 

It  forwards  the  general  deed  of  man, 

And  each  of  the  many  helps  to  recruit 

The  life  of  the  race  by  a  general  plan, 

Each  living  his  own  to  boot." 


M 


If  we  doubt,  then,  the  value  of  our  own  expe- 
rience, even  perhaps  of  our  experience  of  love,  we 
may  appeal  to  the  interdependence  of  goods  and 
evils  in  the  world  to  assure  ourselves  that,  in 
view  of  its  consequences  elsewhere,  this  experience 
was  great  and  important  after  all.  We  need  not 
stop  to  consider  this  supposed  solution,  which 
bristles  with  contradictions;  it  would  not  satisfy 
Browning  himself,  if  he  did  not  back  it  up  with 
something  more  to  his  purpose^somethingnearer 
to  warm  and  transitive  feeling.  The  compensation 
for  our  defeats,  the  answer  to  our  doubts,  is  not 
to  be  found  merely  in  a  proof  of  the  essential 
necessity  and  perfection  of  the  universe;  that 
would  be  cold  comfort,  especially  to  so  uncontem- 
plative  a  mind.  No :  that  answer,  and  compensa- 
tion are  to  come  very  soon  and  very  vividly  to 
every  private  bosom.  There  is  another  life,  a 
series  of  other  lives,  for  this  to  happen  in.  Death 
will  come,  and  — 

"I  shall  thereupon 

Take  rest,  ere  I  be  gone 
Once  more  on  my  adventure  brave  and  new, 

Fearless  and  unperplexed, 

When  I  wage  battle  next, 
What  weapons  to  select,  what  armour  to  endue." 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  203 

"For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave, 

The  black  minute's  at  end, 
And  the  element's  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend, 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul !    I  shall  clasp  thee  again 

And  with  God  be  the  rest ! " 

Into  this  conception  of  continued  life  Browning 
has  put,  as  a  collection  of  further  passages  might 
easily  show,  all  the  items  furnished  by  fancy  or  tra- 
dition which  at  the  moment  satisfied  his  imagination 
—  new  adventures,  reunion  with  friends,  and  even, 
after  a  severe  strain  and  for  a  short  while,  a  little 
peace  and  quiet.  The  gist  of  the  matter  is  that  we 
are  to  live  indefinitely,  that  all  our  faults  can  be 
turned  to  good,  all  our  unfinished  business  settled, 
and  that  therefore  there  is  time  for  anything  we 
like  in  this  world  and  for  all  we  need  in  the  other. 
It  is  in  spirit  the  direct  opposite  of  the  philosophic 
maxim  of  regarding  the  end,  of  taking  care  to  leave 
a  finished  life  and  a  perfect  character  behind  us. 
It  is  the  opposite,  also,  of  the  religious  memento  mori, 
of  the  warning  that  the  time  is  short  before  we  go 
to  our  account.  According  to  Browning,  there  is  no 
account:  .we  have  an  infinite  credit.  With  an, 
unconscious  and  characteristic  mixtura  qj  hp.ufhp.n 
instinctwith  Christian  doctrine,  he  thinks  of  the 
other  world  as  heaven,  but  of  the  life  to  be  led 
there  as  of  the  life  of  Nature. 


204  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

Aristotle  observes  that  we  do  not  think  the  busi- 
ness of  life  worthy  of  the  gods,  to  whom  we  can 
only  attribute  contemplation ;  if  Browning  had  had 
the  idea  of  perfecting  and  rationalizing  this  life 
rather  than  of  continuing  it  indefinitely,  he  would 
have  followed  Aristotle  and  the  Church  in  this 
matter.  But  he  had  no  idea  of  anything  eternal ; 
and  so  he  gave,  as  he  would  probably  have  said, 
a  filling  to  the  empty  Christian  immortality  by 
making  every  man  busy  in  it  about  many  things. 

"^  And  to  the  irrational  man,  to  the  boy,  it  is  no 
unpleasant  idea  to  have  an  infinite  number  of  days 

^  to  live  through,  an  infinite  fi umber  of  dinners  to 
eat,  with  an  infinity  of  fresh  fights  and  new  love- 
affairs,  andno  end  of  last  rides  together. 

But  it  is  a  mere  euphemism  to  call  jbhis  perpet- 
^^na1_va.gra.r> py^a  development  of  the  soul.  A  devel- 
opment means  the  unfolding  of  a  definite  nature, 
the  gradual  manifestation  of  a  known  idea.  A 
series  of  phases,  like  the  successive  leaps  of  a 
water-fall,  is  no  development.  And  Browning  has 
no  idea  of  an  intelligible  good  which  the  phases  of' 
life  might  approach  and  with  reference  to  which 
they  might  constitute  a  progress.  His  jiotion  jg_ 
simjBJj  that  the_^;ame__ofJif%  th^^x^^ 
action,  is  inexhaustible.  You  may  set  up  your 
tenpins  again  after  you  have  bowled  them  over, 
and  you  may  keep  up  the  sport  for  ever.  The 
point  is   to   bring   them    down  as   often  as   pos- 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  205 

sible  with  a  master-stroke  and  a  big  bang.  That 
will  tend  to  invigorate  in  you  that  self-confidence 
which  in  this  system  passes  for  faith.  But  it  is 
unmeaning  to  call  such'aii  exercise  heaven,  or  to 
talk  of  being  "  with  God "  in  such  a  life,  in  any 
sense  in  which  we  are  not  with  God  already  and 
under  all  circumstances.  Our  destiny  would  rather 
be,  as  Browning  himself  expresses  it  in  a  phrase 
which  Attila  or  Alaric  might  have  composed, 
"  bound  dizzily  to  the  wheel  of  change  to  slake  the 
thirst  of  God." 

Such  an  optimism  and  such  a  doctrine  of  immor- 
tality can  give  no  justification  to  experience  which 
it  does  not  already  have  in  its  detached  parts.  In- 
deed, those  dogmas  arejoot  the  basis^of  Browning^s 
attitude,  not  conditions  of^  his  satisfaction  _in 
living,  but  rather  overflowings  of  that  satisfaction. 
The  present  life  is  presumably  a  fair  average  of  the 
whole  series  of  "  adventures  brave  and  new  "  which 
fall  to  each  man's  share;  were  it  not  found  de- 
lightful in  itself,  there  would  be  no  motive  for 
imagining  and  asserting  that  it  is  reproduced  in 
infinitum.  So  too  if  we  did  not  think  that  the  evil 
in  experience  is  actually  utilized  and  visibly  swal- 
lowed up  in  its  good  effects,  we  should  hardly 
venture  to  think  that  God  could  have  regarded  as 
a  good  something  which  has  evil  for  its  condition 
and  which  is  for  that  reason  profoundly  sad  and 
equivocal.     But  Browning's  philosophy  of  life  and 


206  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

habit  of  imagination  do  nqt^  require  the  support_pf 
^any^etaphj^kaJjbh^  His  temperamentisper- 

fectr^^^elf-sufficient  and  primary;  what  doctrines 
he  has  are  suggestedn5ylt~and^"are  too  loose  to  give 
it  more  than  a  hesitant  expression  ;  they  are  quite 
powerless  to  give  it  any  justification  which  it 
might  lack  on  its  face. 

IWs  the  temperament)  then,  that  speaks ;  we 
may  brush  aside  as  unsubstantial,  and  even  as  dis- 
torting, the  web  of  arguments  and  theories  which 
it  has  spun  out  of  itself.  And  what  does  the 
^  temperament  say?  That  life  is  an  adventure,  not 
a  discipline ;  jthat  the  exercise  of  energy  is  the 
^  absolute  good,  irrespective  of  motives  or  of  conse- 
quences^ These  are  the  maxims  of  a  frank  bar- 
barism; nothing  could  express  better  the  lust  of 
life,  the  dogged  unwillingness  to  learn  from  experi- 


ence,  the  contempt  for  rationality,  the  carelessness 

\  about  perfection,  the  admiration  for  mere  force,  in 

which  barbarism  always  betrays  itself.     Thejvague 

religion  which  seeks  to  justify  this  attitude  is  really 

only  another  outburst  of  the  same  irrational  impulse^ 

In  Browning  this   religion  takes  the  name  of 

Christianity,  and  identifies  itself  with  one  or  two 

Christian  ideas  arbitrarily  selected ;  but  at  heart  it 

has  far  more  affinity  to  the  worship  of  Thor  or  of 

Odin  than  to  the  religion  of  the  Cross.     The  zest^ 

y      of  life_  becomes  a  cosmic   emotion;  we  lump  the 

N     whole   together   and  cry,  "  Hurrah  for   the   Uni- 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  207 

verse!"     A  faith  which  is  thus  a  pure  matter  of 
lustiness  and  inebriation  rises  and  falls,  attracts  or 


repels,  with  the  eBh  and  flow  of  the  mood  from 
which  it  springs.  It  is  invincible  because  unseiz- 
able ;  it  is  as  safe  from  refutation  as  it  is  rebellious 
to  embodiment.  But  it  cannot  enlighten  or  correct 
the  passions  on  which  it  feeds.  Like  a  servile 
priest,  it  flatters  them  in  the  name  of  Heaven.  It 
cloaks  irrationality  in  sanctimony;  and  its  admi- 
ration^jor  every  bluff  folly, ^J)emg_Jhu^_J3istified_ 
by  a  theory,Jbecomes  a  positive  fanaticism^  eager 
to  defend^  any^way ward  impulse. 

Such  barbarism  of  temper  and  thought  could 
hardly,  in  a  man  of  Browning's  independence  and 
spontaneity,  be  without  its  counterpart  in  his  art. 
When  a  man's  personal  religion  is  passive,  as 
Shakespeare's  seems  to  have  been,  and  is  adopted 
without  question  or  particular  interest  from  the 
society  around  him,  we  may  not  observe  any  an- 
alogy between  it  and  the  free  creations  of  that 
man's  mind.  Not  so  when  the  religion  is  cre- 
ated afresh  by  the  private  imagination ;  it  is  then 
merely  one  among  many  personal  works  of  art, 
and  will  naturally  bear  a  family  likeness  to  the 
others.  The  same  individual  temperament,  with 
its  limitations  and  its  bias,  will  appear  in  the  art 
which  has  appeared  in  the  religion.  And  such 
is  the  case  with  Browning.  His  limitations  as  a 
poet  are  the  counterpart  of  his  limitations  as  a 


208  POETKY  AND   llELIGION 

moralist  and  theologian;    only  in  the  poet  they 

are  not   so   regrettable.     Philosophy  and  religion 

are  nothing  if  not  ultimate;   it  is  their  business 

to   deal   with  general  principles   and  final  aims. 

'  Now  it  is  in  the  conception  of _things  junjamental 

^  and  ultimate  that  Browning  is  weak;  he  is  strong 

J,n  t]ie  conception_of  things  immediate.     The  pulse 

of  the  emotion,  the  bobbing  up  of  the  thought,  the 

streaming  of  the  reverie  —  these  he  can  note  down 

with  picturesque  force  or  imagine  with  admirable 

fecundity. 

Yet  the  limits  of  such  excellence  are  narrow, 
for  no  man  can  safely  go  far  without  the  guidance 
of  reason.  His  long  poems  have  no  structure 
—  for  that  name  cannot  be  given  to  the  singu- 
lar mechanical  division  of  "  The  Eing  and  the 
Book.''  Even  his  short  poems  have  nocomplete- 
ness,  no  limpidity.  They  are  little  torsos  made 
broken  so  as  to  stimulate  the  reader  to  the  resto- 
ration of  their  missing  legs  and  arms.  What  is 
admirable  in  them  is__pregnancy_of_phra^  yiv^ 
ness  of  passion_and  sentiment,  jieaped-up  scraps 
_of__xibgeryationj^  qccasionulja^hes  _of_^^  occar 
sional  beauties ^f_ver sification, — all  like 

*'  the  quick  sharp  scratch 
And  blue  spurt  of  a  lighted  match." 

There  is  never  anything  largely  composed  in  the 
spirit  of  pure  beauty,  nothing  devotedly  fiiiished, 


THE  POETRY  OF  BARBARISM  209 

nothJDg  simple  and  truly  just.  The  poet's  mind  > 
cannot  reach  equilibrium;  at  best  he  oscillates 
between  opposed  extravagances ;  his  ^final  "gord 
is  still  a  boutade,  still  an  explosion.  He  has  no 
sustained  nobility  of_style.  He  affects  with  the 
reader  a  contLdentiaT  and  vulgar  ^nanner^so  as  to 
be  more  sincere  and  to  feel  more  at  home.  Even  *^ 
in  the  poems  where  the  effort  at  impersonality  is  ^ 
most  successful,  the  dramatic  disguise  is  usually 
thrown  off  in  a  preface,  epilogue  or  parenthesis. 
The  author  likes  to  remind  us  of  himself  by  some 
confidential  wink  or  genial  poke  in  the  ribs,  by 
some  little  interlarded  sneer.  We  get  in  these 
tricks  of  manner  a  taste  of  that  essential  vul- 
garity, that  indigerence  to  purity  and  distinction, 
which  is  latent  but  pervasive  in  all  the  products 
of  this  mind.  Th^^^^^me^  disdain  of  perfection 
which  appears  in  his  ethics  appears  here  in  his 
verse,  and  impairs  its  beauty  by  allowing  it  to 
remain  too  often  obscure,  affected,  and  grotesque. 
Such  a  correspondence  is  natural:  for  the  same 
powers  of  conception  and  expression  are  needed 
in  fiction,  which,  if  turned  to  reflection,  would 
produce  a  good  philosophy.  Jleaspn  is  necessary 
to  the  perception  of  high  beauty.  Disciplineis 
indispensable  to  art.  Work  from  which  these -^ 
qualities  are  absent  must  be  barbaric ;  it  can  have 
no  ideal  form  and  must  appeal  to  us  only  through 
the  sensuousness  and  profusion  of  its    materials. 


^ 


210  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

We  are  invited  by  it  to  lapse  into  a  miscellane- 
ous appreciativeness,  into  a  subservience  to  every 
detached  impression.  And  yet,  if  we  would  only 
reflect  even  on  these  disordered  beauties,  we  should 
see  that  the  principle  by  which  they  delight  us 
is  a  principle  by  which  an  ideal,  an  image  of  per- 
fection, is  inevitably  evoked.  We  can  have  no 
pleasure  or  pain,  nor  any  preference  whatsoever, 
without  implicitly -setting  up  a  standard  of  excel- 
lence, an  ideal  of  what  would  satisfy  us  there.  To 
make  these  implicit  ideals  explicit,  to  catch  their 
hint,  to  work  out  their  theme,  and  express  clearly 
to  ourselves  and  to  the  world  what  they  are  de- 
manding in  the  place  of  the  actual  —  that  is  the 
labour  of  reason  and  the  task  of  genius.  The  two 
cannot  be  divided.  ^^Clarification  of_  ideas  and  dis- 
entanglement  of  values  arenas  essential  tojesthetic 
activity  as  Jp^inteH^i^ence.  A  failure  of  reason  is 
a  failure  ofa,rt^nd_tastej. 

The  limits  of  Browning^s  art,  like  the  limits  of 
Whitman's,  can  therefore  be  understood  by  consid- 
ering his  mental  habit.  Both  poets  had  powerful 
imaginations,  but  the  ty^e  of  their  imaginations 
was  loTS^.  In  Whitman  imagination  was  limited  to 
marshalling  sensations  in  single  file ;  the  embroid- 
eries he  made  around  that  central  line  were  simple 
and  insignificant,  ^^is  energy  was  concentrated 
on  that  somewhat  animal  form  of  contemplation, 
of  which,  for  the  rest,  he  was  a  great,  perhaps  an 


6l 


THE  POETEY   OF  BAEBARISM  211 

unequalled  master^  Browning  rose  above  that 
level;  with  him  sensation  is  usually  in  the  back- 
ground ;  he  is  not  particularly  a  poet  of  the  senses 
or  of  ocular  vision. C-Sis  favourite  subject-matter  *» 
is  rather  the  stream  of  thought  and  feeling  in  ^  ■ — - 
the  mind;  he  is  the  poet  of  soliloquy.  Nature  ,/r^i 
and  life  as  they  really  are,  rather  than  as  they 
may  appear  to  the  ignorant  and  passionate  partici- 
pant in  them,  lie  beyond  his  range.  Even  in  his 
best  dramas,  like  "A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon"  or 
"  Colombe's  Birthday,''  the  interest  remains  in  the 
experience  of  the  several  persons  as  they  explain 
it  to  us.  The  same  is  the  case  in  "The  Bing  and 
the  Book,"  the  conception  of  which,  in  twelve 
monstrous  soliloquies,  is  a  striking  evidence  of  the 
poet's  predilection  for  this  form. 

The  method  is,  to  penetrate  by  sympathy  rather  ^ 
than  to  portray  by  intelligence.  The  most  authori- 
tative insight  is  not  the  poet's  or  the  spectator's, 
aroused  and  enlightened  by  the  spectacle,  but  the 
various  heroes'  own,  in  their  moment  of  intensest 
passion.  We  therefore  _miss  the  tragic  relief  and 
exaltation,  and  come  away  instead  with  the  uncom- 
fortable feeling  that  an  obstinate  folly  is  appar- 
ently the_most  glorious_and  choice  worthy  thing  iii__ 
jtheworld^  This  is  evidently  the  poet's  own  illusion, 
and  those  who  do  not  happen  to  share  it  must  feel 
that  if  life  were  really  as  irrational  as  he  thinks 
it,  it  would  be  not  only  profoundly  discouraging, 


212  POETRY   AKD  RELIGION 

which  it  often  is,  but  profoundly  disgusting,  which 
it  surely  is  not;  for  at  least  it  reveals  the  ideal 
which  it  fails  to  attain. 

"^  This   ideal   Browning  never   disentangles.     For 
^  him  the   crude  experience   is   the   only  _end^  the 
endless  stru^glejthe  only  ideal,  and  the  perturbed 
"Soul"  the   only  organon  of  truth.     The   arrest 
of   his   intelligence   at   this   point,   before   it  has 
envisaged  any  rational  object,  explains  the  arrest 
of  his  dramatic  art  at  soliloquy.     His  immersion 
/  in  the  forms   of  self -consciousness   prevents  him 
i  from  dramatizing  the  real  relations   of  men  and 
/    their  thinkings  to  one   another,  to  Nature,  and  to 
destiny.     For  in  order  to  do   so  he  would  have 
had  to  view  his  characters   from   above  (as  Cer- 
vantes  did,   for   instance),  and  to   see   them  not 
merely   as   they   appeared  to  themselves,  but  as 
they  appear  to  reason.     This  higher  attitude,  how- 
ever, was  not  only  beyond  Browning's  scope,  it  was 
positively_jiQ6traTy_jto_h^  Had  he 

reached  it,  he  would  no  longer  have  seen  the  uni- 
verse through  the  "Soul,"  but  through  the  intel- 
lect, and  he  would  not  have  been  able  to  cry,  "  How 
the  world  is  made  for  each  one  of  us ! "  On  the 
contrary,  the  "Soul"  would  have  figured  only  in 
its  true  conditions,  in  all  its  ignorance  and  depend- 
ence, and  also  in  its  essential  teachableness,  a  point 
against  which  Browning's  barbaric  wilfulness  par- 
ticularly rebelled.     Rooted  in  his  persuasion  that 


THE   POETRY   OF  BARBARISM  218 

the  soul  is  essentially  omnipotent  and  that  to  live  ^g^ 
hard  can  never  be  to  live  wrongs  he  remained  fas- 
cinated by  the  march  and  method  of  self -conscious- 
ness, and  never  allowed  himself  to  be  weaned  from 
that  romantic  fatuity  by  the  energy  of  rational 
imagination,  which  prompts  us  not  to  regard  our 
ideas  as  mere  filling  of  a  dream,  but  rather  to  build 
on  them  the  conception  of  permanent  objects  and 
overruling  principles,  such  as  Nature,  society,  and 
the  other  ideals  of  reason.  A  full-grown  imagina- 
tion deals  with  these  things,  which  do  not  obey  the 
laws  of  psychological  progression,  and  cannot  be 
described  by  the  methods  of  soliloquy. 

We  thus  see  that  Browning's  sphere,  though 
more  subtle  and  complex  than  Whitman's,  was 
still  elementary.  It  lay  far  below  the  spheres 
of  social  and  historical  reality  in  which  Shake- 
speare moved;  far  below  the  comprehensive  and 
cosmic  sphere  of  every  great  epic  poet.  Browning 
did  not  even  reach  the  intellectual  plane  of  such 
contemporary  poets  as  Tennyson  and  Matthew  Ar^,, 
nold,  who,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  their  \ 
powers^  did  not  study  consciousness  for  itself,  but 
for  the  sake  of  its  meaning  and  of  the  objects 
jw^h  itrevealed.  The  best  things  that  come 
into  a  man's  consciousness  are  the  things  that  take 
him  out  of  it  —  the  rational  things  that  are  independ- 
ent of  his  personal  perception  and  of  his  personal 
existence.    These  he  approaches  with  his  reason,  and 


214  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

they,  in  the  same  measure,  endow  him  with  their 
immortality.      But  precisely    these    things  —  the 
/objects  of  science  and  of  the  constructive  imagina- 
'  tion  —  Browning  always  saw  askance,  in  the  out- 
skirts of  his  field  of  vision,  for  his  eye  was  fixed 
J  and  riveted  on  the  soliloc^uizing  Soul.     And  this 
Soul  being,  to  his  apprehension,  irrational,  did  not 
give  itself  over  to  those  permanent  objects  which 
might  otherwise  have  occupied  it,  but   ruminated 
on  its  own  accidental  emotions,  on  its  love-affairs, 
and  on  its  hopes  of  going  on  so  ruminating  for 
ever. 

The  pathology  of  the  human  mind  —  for  the 
normal,  too,  is  pathological  when  it  is  not  referred 
to  the  ideal  —  the  pathology  of  the  human  mind 
is  a  very  interesting  subject,  demanding  great  gifts 
and  great  ingenuity  in  its  treatment.  Browning 
ministers  to  this  interest,  and  possesses  this  in- 
genuity and  these  gifts.  More  than  any  others 
poet  he  keeps  a  kind  of  speculation  alive  in  the 
now  large  body  of  sentimental,  eager-minded  peo- 
ple, who  no  longer  can  find  in  a  definite  religion  a 
form  and  language  for  their  imaginative  lif e.(  That 
this  service  is  greatly  appreciated  speaks  well  for 
the  ineradicable  tendency  in  man  to  study  himself 
and  his  destiny.  We  do  not  deny  the  achievement 
when  we  point  out  its  nature  and  limitations.  It 
does  not  cease  to  be  something  because  it  is  taken 
to  be  more  than  it  is. 


THE  POETRY   OF   BARBARISM  215 

In  every  imaginative  sphere  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury has  been  an  era  of  chaos,  as  it  has  been  an  era 
of  order  and  growing  organization  in  the  spheres 
of  science  and  of  industry.  An  ancient  doctrine  of 
the  philosophers  asserts  that  to  chaos  the  world 
must  ultimately  return.  And  what  is  perhaps  true 
of  the  cycles  of  cosmic  change  is  certainly  true  of 
the  revolutions  of  culture.  Nothing  lasts  for  ever : 
languages,  arts,  and  religions  disintegrate  with  time. 
Yet  the  perfecting  of  such  forms  is  the  only  cri-  | 
terion  of  progress;  the  destruction  of  them  the  ' 
chief  evidence  of  decay.  Perhaps  fate  intends 
that  we  should  have,  in  our  imaginative  decadence, 
the  consolation  of  fancying  that  we  are  still  pro- 
gressing, and  that  the  disintegration  of  religion 
and  the  arts  is  bringing  us  nearer  to  the  proto- 
plasm of  sensation  and  passion.  If  energy  and  *^ 
actuality  are  all  that  we  carefor,  chaos  is  as  good 
as  order,  and^barbarism  as  good  as  discipline —  > 
better,  perhaps,  since  impulse  is  notjtheiiJfi&trained. 
within^^nybounds  of  reason  or  beauty.  But  if  the 
powers  of  the  human  mind  are  at  any  time  ade- 
quate to  the  task  of  digesting  experience,  clearness 
andorder^jnevitably  supervene.  The  moulds  of 
thought  are  imposed  uponT^ature,  and  the  convic- 
tion of  a  definite  truth  arises  together  with  the 
vision  of  a  supreme  perfection.  It  is  only  at  such 
periods  that  the  human  animal  vindicates  his  title 
of  rational.     If  such  an  epoch  should  return,  people 


216  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

will  no  doubt  retrace  our  present  gropings  with 
interest  and  see  in  them  gradual  approaches  to 
their  own  achievement.  Whitman  and  Browning 
might  well  figure  then  as  representatives  of  our 
time.  For  the  merit  of  being  representative  can- 
not be  denied  them.  The  mind  of  our  ^jge^  like^ 
theirs,  is  chokedwith  materials,  emotional,  _an^ 
inconclusive.  They  merely_aggravate  our  charac- 
teristics,  and  their  success  with  us  is  ,diia_partly^ 


their  own  absolute  strength  and  partly  to  our 
common  weakness.  If  once,  however,  this  imagi- 
native^^weakness  could  be  overcome,  and  a  form 
found  for  the  crude  matter  of  experience,  men 
might  look  back  from  the  height  of  a  new  religion 
and  a  new  poetry  upon  the  present  troubles  of  the 
spirit;  and  perhaps  even  these  things  might  then 
be  pleasant  to  remember. 


VIII 

EMEESON 

Those  who  knew  Emerson,  or  who  stood  so  near 
to  his  time  and  to  his  circle  that  they  caught  some 
echo  of  his  personal  influence,  did  not  judge  him 
merely  as  a  poet  or  philosopher,  nor  identify  his 
efficacy  with  that  of  his  writings.  His  friends  and 
neighbours,  the  congregations  he  preached  to  in  his 
younger  days,  the  audiences  that  afterward  lis- 
tened to  his  lectures,  all  agreed  in  a  veneration 
for  his  person  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  their 
understanding  or  acceptance  of  his  opinions.  They 
flocked  to  him  and  listened  to  his  word,  not  so 
much  for  the  sake  of  its  absolute  meaning  as  for 
the  atmosphere  of  candour,  purity,  and  serenity 
that  hung  about  it,  as  about  a  sort  of  sacred  music. 
They  felt  themselves  in  the  presence  of  a  rare  and 
beautiful  spirit,  who  was  in  communion  with  a 
higher  world.  More  than  the  truth  his  teaching 
might  express,  they  valued  the  sense  it  gave  them 
of  a  truth  that  was  inexpressible.  They  became 
aware,  if  we  may  say  so,  of  the  ultrarviolet  rays  of 
his  spectrum,  of  the  inaudible  highest  notes  of  his 
gamut,  too  pure  and  thin  for  common  ears. 
217 


218  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

This  effect  was  by  no  means  due  to  the  possession 
on  the  part  of  Emerson  of  the  secret  of  the  uni- 
verse, or  even  of  a  definite  conception  of  ultimate 
truth.  He  was  not  a  prophet  who  had  once  for  all 
climbed  his  Sinai  or  his  Tabor,  and  having  there 
beheld  the  transfigured  reality,  descended  again  to 
make  authoritative  report  of  it  to  the  world.  Far 
from  it.  At  bottoni  he  had  no  doctrine  at  all.. 
The  deeper  he  went  and  the  more  he  tried  to 
grapple  with  fundamental  conceptions,  the  vaguer 
and  more  elusive  they  became  in  his  hands.  Did 
he  know  what  he  meant  by  Spirit  or  the  "Over- 
Soul  "  ?  Could  he  say  what  he  understood  by  the 
terms,  so  constantly  on  his  lips,  Nature,  Law,  God, 
Benefit,  or  Beauty?  He  could  not,  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  that  incapacity  was  so  lively  within 
him  that  he  never  attempted  to  give  articulation  to 
his  philosophy.  His  finer  instinct  kept  him  from 
doing  that  violence  to  his  inspiration. 

The  source  of  his  power  lay  not  in  his  doctrine, 
but  in  his  temperament,  and  the  rare  quality  of  his 
wisdom  was  due  less  to  his  reason  than  to  his  imag- 
ination. Reality  eluded  him ;  he  had  neither  dili- 
gence nor  constancy  enough  to  master  and  possess 
it ;  but  his  mind  was  open  to  all  philosophic  influ- 
ences, from  whatever  quarter  they  might  blow;  the 
lessons  of  science  and  the  hints  of  poetry  worked 
themselves  out  in  him  to  a  free  and  personal  reli- 
^**^gion.     He  differed  from  the  plodding  many,  not  in 


EMERSON  219 

knowing  things  better,  but  in  having  more  ways  of 
knowing  them.  His  grasp  was  not  particularly 
firm,  he  was  far  from  being,  like  a  Plato  or  an 
Aristotle,  past  master  in  the  art  and  the  science 
of  life.  But  his  mind  was  endowed  with  unusual 
plasticity,  with  unusual  spontaneity  and  liberty  of 
movement  —  it  was  a  fairyland  of  thoughts  and 
fancies.  He  was  like  a  young  god  making  experi- 
ments in  creation :  he  blotched  the  work,  and 
always  began  again  on  a  new  and  better  plan. 
Every  day  he  said,  "  Let  there  be  light,"  and  every 
day  the  light  was  new.  His  sun,  like  that  of 
Heraclitus,  was  different  every  morning. 

What  seemed,  then,  to  the  more  earnest  and  less 
critical  of  his  hearers  a  revelation  from  above  was  in 
truth  rather  an  insurrection  from  beneath,  a  shak- 
ing loose  from  convention,  a  disintegration  of  the 
normal  categories  of  reason  in  favour  of  various  im- 
aginative principles,  on  which  the  world  might  have 
been  built,  if  it  had  been  built  difterently.  This  gift 
of  revolutionary  thinking  allowed  new  aspects,  hints 
of  wider  laws,  premonitions  of  unthought-of  funda- 
mental unities  to  spring  constantly  into  view.  But 
such  visions  were  necessarily  fleeting,  because  the 
human  mind  had  long  before  settled  its  grammar, 
and  discovered,  after  much  groping  and  many 
defeats,  the  general  forms  in  which  experience  will 
allow  itself  to  be  stated.  These  general  forms 
are  the  principles  of  common  sense  and  positive 


220  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

science,  no  less  imaginative  in  their  origin  than 
those  notions  which  we  now  call  transcendental, 
but  grown  prosaic,  like  the  metaphors  of  common 
speech,  by  dint  of  repetition. 

Yet  authority,  even  of  this  rational  kind,  sat 
lightly  upon  Emerson.  To  reject  tradition  and 
think  as  one  might  have  thought  if  no  man  had 
ever  existed  before  was  indeed  the  aspiration  of  the 
Transcendentalists,  and  although  Emerson  hardly 
regarded  himself  as  a  member  of  that  school,  he 
largely  shared  its  tendency  and  passed  for  its 
spokesman.  Without  protesting  against  tradition, 
he  smilingly  eluded  it  in  his  thoughts,  untamable 
in  their  quiet  irresponsibility.  He  fled  to  his 
woods  or  to  his  ^^  pleached  garden,"  to  be  the  cre- 
ator of  his  own  worlds  in  solitude  and  freedom. 
No  wonder  that  he  brought  thence  to  the  tightly 
conventional  minds  of  his  contemporaries  a  breath 
as  if  from  paradise.  His  simplicity  in  novelty,  his 
profundity,  his  ingenuous  ardour  must  have  seemed 
to  them  something  heavenly,  and  they  may  be  ex- 
cused if  they  thought  they  detected  inspiration 
even  in  his  occasional  thin  paradoxes  and  guile- 
less whims.  They  were  stifled  with  conscience  and 
he  brought  them  a  breath  of  Nature;  they  were 
surfeited  with  shallow  controversies  and  he  gave 
them  poetic  truth. 

-^Imagination,  indeed,  is  his  single  theme.  As  a 
preacher  might  under  every  text  enforce  the  same 


EMEESON  221 

lessons  of  the  gospel,  so  Emerson  traces  in  every 
sphere  the   same   spiritual   laws   of  experience  — 
compensation,  continuity,  the  self-expression  of  the 
Soul  in  the  forms  of  Nature  and  of  society,  until  she 
finally  recognizes  herself  in  her  own  work  and  sees 
its  beneficence  and  beauty.     His  constant  refrain 
is   the   omnipotence   of    imaginative   thought;   its 
power  first  to  make  the  world,  then  to  understand 
it,  and  finally  to  rise  above  it.     All  Nature  is  an 
embodiment  of  our  native  fancy,  all  history  a  drama 
in  which  the  innate  possibilities  of  the  spirit  are 
enacted  and  realized.     While  the  conflict  of  life  ] 
and  the  shocks  of  experience  seem  to  bring  us  face  /^ 
to  face  with  an  alien  and  overwhelming  power,  re-  X 
flection  can  humanize  and  rationalize  that  power 
by  conceiving  its  laws;  and  with  this  recognition^ 
of  the  rationality  of  all  things  comes  the  sense  of   ) 
their  beauty   and   order.     The   destruction   which  ^ 
Nature  seems  to  prepare  for  our  special  hopes  is 
thus  seen  to  be  the  victory  of  our  impersonal  inter- 
ests.    To  awaken  in  us   this  spiritual  insight,  an 
elevation  of  mind  which  is  at  once  an  act  of  com- 
prehension and   of  worship,   to   substitute   it  for  " 
lower  passions  and  more  servile  forms  of  intelli-. 
gence  —  that    is    Emerson's   constant   effort.      All 
his  resources  of  illustration,  observation,  and  rheto- 
ric are   used   to  deepen   and   clarify  this   sort  of 
wisdom. 
Such  thought  is   essentially  the   same  that  is 


222  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

found  in  the  German  romantic  or  idealistic  phi- 
losophers, with  whom  Emerson's  affinity  is  remark- 
able, all  the  more  as  he  seems  to  have  borrowed 
little  or  nothing  from  their  works.  The  critics  of 
human  nature,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  had 
shown  how  much  men's  ideas  depend  on  their  pre- 
dispositions, on  the  character  of  their  senses  and 
the  habits  of  their  intelligence.  Seizing  upon  this 
thought  and  exaggerating  it,  the  romantic  philoso- 
phers attributed  to  the  spirit  of  man  the  omnipo- 
tence which  had  belonged  to  God,  and  felt  that  in 
this  way  they  were  reasserting  the  supremacy  of 
mind  over  matter  and  establishing  it  upon  a  safe 
and  rational  basis. 

The  Germans  were  great  system-makers,  and 
Emerson  cannot  rival  them  in  the  sustained  effort 
of  thought  by  which  they  sought  to  reinterpret 
every  sphere  of  being  according  to  their  chosen 
principles.  (^But_he  surpassed  them  in  an  iustinc- 
tive  sense  of  what  he  was  deSg;::^  He  never  rep- 
resented his  poetry  as  science,  nor  countenanced 
the  formation  of  a  new  sect  that  should  nurse  the 
sense  of  a  private  and  mysterious  illumination,  and 
relight  the  fagots  of  passion  and  prejudice.  He 
never  tried  to  seek  out  and  defend  the  universal 
implications  of  his  ideas,  and  never  wrote  the  book 
he  had  once  planned  on  the  law  of  compensation, 
foreseeing,  we  may  well  believe,  the  sophistries  in 
which  he  would  have  been  directly  involved.     He 


EMERSON  223 

fortunately  preferred  a  fresh  statement  on  a  fresh 
subject.  A  suggestion  once  given,  the  spirit  once 
aroused  to  speculation,  a  glimpse  once  gained  of 
some  ideal  harmony,  he  chose  to  descend  again  to 
common  sense  and  to  touch  the  earth  for  a  moment 
before  another  flight.  The  faculty  of  idealization 
was  itself  what  he  valued.  Philosophy  for  him 
was  rather  a  moral  energy  flowering  into  sprightli- 
ness  of  thought  than  a  body  of  serious  and  defen- 
sible doctrines.  In  practising  transcendental  spec- 
ulation only  in  this  poetic  and  sporadic  fashion, 
Emerson  retained  its  true  value  and  avoided  its 
greatest  danger.  He  secured  the  freedom  and  fer- 
tility of  his  thought  and  did  not  allow  one  concep- 
tion of  law  or  one  hint  of  harmony  to  sterilize  the 
mind  and  prevent  the  subsequent  birth  within  it 
of  other  ideas,  no  less  just  and  imposing  than  their 
predecessors.  For  we  are  not  dealing  at  all  in  such 
a  philosophy  with  matters  of  fact  or  with  such 
verifiable  truths  as  exclude  their  opposites.  We 
are  dealing  only  with  imagination,  with  the  art  of 
conception,  and  with  the  various  forms  in  which 
reflection,  like  a  poet,  may  compose  and  recompose 
human  experience. 

A  certain  disquiet  mingled,  however,  in  the  minds 
of  Emerson's  contemporaries  with  the  admiration 
they  felt  for  his  purity  and  genius.  They  saw  that  he 
had  forsaken  the  doctrines  of  the  Church;  and  they 
were  not  sure  whether  he  held  quite  unequivocally 


224  POETEY  AND  RELIGION 

any  doctrine  whatever.  We  may  not  all  of  us  share 
the  concern  for  orthodoxy  which  usually  caused 
this  puzzled  alarm  :  we  may  understand  that  it  was 
not  Emerson's  vocation  to  be  definite  and  dogmatic 
in  religion  any  more  than  in  philosophy.  Yet  that 
disquiet  will  not,  even  for  us,  wholly  disappear. 
It  is  produced  by  a  defect  which  naturally  accom- 
panies imagination  in  all  but  the  greatest  minds. 
I  mean  disorganization,  v^naerson  not  only  con- 
ceived things  in  new  ways,  but  he  seemed  to  think 
the  new  ways  might  cancel  and  supersede  the  old) 
His  imagination  was  to  invalidate  the  understand- 
ing. That  inspiration  which  should  come  to  fulfil 
seemed  too  often  to  come  to  destroy.  If  he  was  able 
so  constantly  to  stimulate  us  to  fresh  thoughts,  was 
it  not  because  he  demolished  the  labour  of  long 
ages  of  reflection  ?  Was  not  the  startling  effect  of 
much  of  his  writing  due  to  its  contradiction  to  tra- 
dition and  to  common  sense  ? 

So  long  as  he  is  a  poet  and  in  the  enjoyment  of 
his  poetic  license,  we  can  blame  this  play  of  mind 
only  by  a  misunderstanding.  It  is  possible  to 
think  otherwise  than  as  common  sense  thinks; 
there  are  other  categories  beside  those  of  science. 
When  we  employ  them  we  enlarge  our  lives.  We 
add  to  the  world  of  fact  any  number  of  worlds  of 
the  imagination  in  which  human  nature  and  the 
eternal  relations  of  ideas  may  be  nobly  expressed. 
So  far  our  imaginative  fertility  is  only  a  benefit : 


EMERSON  225 

it  surrounds  us  with  the  congenial  and  necessary- 
radiation  of  art  and  religion.  It  manifests  our 
moral  vitality  in  the  bosom  of  Nature. 

But  sometimes  imagination  invades  the  sphere  of 
understanding  and  seems  to  discredit  its  indispensa- 
ble work.  Common  sense,  we  are  allowed  to  infer, 
is  a  shallow  affair:  true  insight  changes  all  that. 
When  so  applied,  poetic  activity  is  not  an  unmixed 
good.  It  loosens  our  hold  on  fact  and  confuses  our^ 
intelligence,  so  that  we  forget  that  intelligence  has 
itself  every  prerogative  of  imagination,  and  has 
besides  the  sanction  of  practical  validity.  We" 
are  made  to  believe  that  since  the  understanding 
is  something  human  and  conditioned,  something 
which  might  have  been  different,  as  the  senses 
might  have  been  different,  and  which  we  may  yet, 
so  to  speak,  get  behind  —  therefore  the  understand- 
ing ought  to  be  abandoned.  We  long  for  higher 
faculties,  neglecting  those  we  have,  we  yearn  for 
intuition,  closing  our  eyes  upon  experience.  We 
become  mystical. 

Mysticism,  as  we  have  said,  is  the  surrender  of  a 
category  of  thought  because  we  divine  its  relativity. 
As  every  new  category,  however,  must  share  this 
reproach,  the  mystic  is  obliged  in  the  end  to  give 
them  all  up,  the  poetic  and  moral  categories  no 
less  than  the  physical,  so  that  the  end  of  his 
purification  is  the  atrophy  of  his  whole  nature, 
the  emptying  of  his  whole  heart  and  mind  to  make 
Q 


226  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 


room,  as  he  thinks,  for  God.  By  attacking  the 
authority  of  the  understanding  as  the  organon  of 
knowledge,  by  substituting  itself  for  it  as  the 
herald  of  a  deeper  truth,  the  imagination  thus 
prepares  its  own  destruction.  For  if  the  under- 
standing is  rejected  because  it  cannot  grasp  the 
absolute,  the  imagination  and  all  its  works  —  art, 
dogma,  worship  —  must  presently  be  rejected  for 
the  same  reason.  Common  sense  and  poetry  must 
both  go  by  the  board,  and  conscience  must  follow 
after :  for  all  these  are  human  and  relative.  Mys- 
ticism will  be  satisfied  only  with  the  absolute,  and 
as  the  absolute,  by  its  very  definition,  is  not  repre- 
sen table  by  any  specific  faculty,  it  must  be  ap- 
proached through  the  abandonment  of  all.  The 
lights  of  life  must  be  extinguished  that  the  light  of 
the  absolute  may  shine,  and  the  possession  of  every- 
thing in  general  must  be  secured  by  the  surrender 
of  everything  in  particular. 

The  same  diffidence,  however,  the  same  constant 
renewal  of  sincerity  which  kept  Emerson's  flights 
of  imagination  near  to  experience,  kept  his  mys- 
ticism also  within  bounds.  A  certain  mystical 
tendency  is  pervasive  with  him,  but  there  are  only 
one  or  two  subjects  on  which  he  dwells  with  enough 
constancy  and  energy  of  attention  to  make  his  mys- 
tical treatment  of  them  pronounced.  One  of  these 
is  the  question  of  the  unity  of  all  minds  in  the 
single  soul  of  the  universe,  which  is  the  same  in  all 


EMERSON  227 

creatures ;  another  is  the  question  of  evil  and  of  its 
evaporation  in  the  universal  harmony  of  things. 
Both  these  ideas  suggest  themselves  at  certain 
turns  in  every  man's  experience,  and  might  receive 
a  rational  formulation.  But  they  are  intricate  sub- 
jects, obscured  by  many  emotional  prejudices,  so 
that  the  labour,  impartiality,  and  precision  which 
would  be  needed  to  elucidate  them  are  to  be  looked 
for  in  scholastic  rather  than  in  inspired  thinkers, 
and  in  Emerson  least  of  all.  Before  these  prob- 
lems he  is  alternately  ingenuous  and  rhapsodical, 
and  in  both  moods  equally  helpless.  Individuals 
no  doubt  exist,  he  says  to  himself.  But,  ah !  Na- 
poleon is  in  every  schoolboy.  In  every  squatter 
in  the  western  prairies  we  shall  find  an  owner — 

"  Of  Caesar's  hand  and  Plato's  brain, 
Of  Lord  Christ's  heart,  and  Shakespeare's  strain." 

But  how?  we  may  ask.  Potentially?  Is  it  be- 
cause any  mind,  were  it  given  the  right  body  and 
the  right  experience,  were  it  made  over,  in  a  word, 
into  another  mind,  would  resemble  that  other  mind 
to  the  point  of  identity  ?  Or  is  it  that  our  souls 
are  already  so  largely  similar  that  we  are  subject 
to  many  kindred  promptings  and  share  many  ideals 
unrealizable  in  our  particular  circumstances  ?  But 
then  we  should  simply  be  saying  that  if  what 
makes  men  different  were  removed,  men  would  be 
indistinguishable,  or  that,  in  so  far  as  they  are  now 


228  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

alike,  they  can  understand  one  another  by  summon- 
ing up  their  respective  experiences  in  the  fancy. 
There  would  be  no  mysticism  in  that,  but  at  the 
same  time,  alas,  no  eloquence,  no  paradox,  and,  if 
we  must  say  the  word,  no  nonsense. 

On  the  question  of  evil,  Emerson's  position  is  of 
J^e  same  kind.  There  is  evil,  of  course,  he  tells  us. 
Experience  is  sad.  There  is  a  crack  in  everything 
that  God  has  made.  But,  ah!  the  laws  of  the 
universe  are  sacred  and  beneficent.  Without  them 
nothing  good  could  arise.  All  things,  then,  are  in 
their  right  places  and  the  universe  is  perfect  above 
our  querulous  tears.  Perfect  ?  we  may  ask.  But 
perfect  from  what  point  of  view,  in  reference  to 
what  ideal  ?  To  its  own  ?  To  that  of  a  man  who 
renouncing  himself  and  all  naturally  dear  to  him, 
ignoring  the  injustice,  suffering,  and  impotence  in 
the  world,  allows  his  will  and  his  conscience  to  be 
hypnotized  by  the  spectacle  of  a  necessary  evolu- 
tion, and  lulled  into  cruelty  by  the  pomp  and  music 
of  a  tragic  show?  In  that  case  the  evil  is  not 
explained,  it  is  forgotten ;  it  is  not  cured,  but  con- 
doned. We  have  surrendered  the  category  of  the 
better  and  the  worse,  the  deepest  foundation  of 
life  and  reason ;  we  have  become  mystics  on  the 
one  subject  on  which,  above  all  others,  we  ought  to 
be  men. 

Two  forces  may  be  said  to  have  carried  Emerson 
in  this  mystical  direction;   one,  that  freedom  of 


EMERSON  229 

his  imagination  whicli  we  have  already  noted,  and 
which  kept  him  from  the  fear  of  self-contradiction ; 
the  other  the  habit  of  worship  inherited  from  his 
clerical  ancestors  and  enforced  by  his  religious  edu- 
cation. The  spirit  of  conformity,  the  unction,  the 
loyalty  even  unto  death  inspired  by  the  religion  of 
Jehovah,  were  dispositions  acquired  by  too  long  a 
discipline  and  rooted  in  too  many  forms  of  speech, 
of  thought,  and  of  worship  for  a  man  like  Emerson, 
who  had  felt  their  full  force,  ever  to  be  able  to  lose 
them.  The  evolutions  of  his  abstract  opinions  left 
that  habit  unchanged.  Unless  we  keep  this  cir- 
cumstance in  mind,  we  shall  not  be  able  to  under- 
stand the  kind  of  elation  and  sacred  joy,  so  charac- 
teristic of  his  eloquence,  with  which  he  propounds 
laws  of  Nature  and  aspects  of  experience  which, 
viewed  in  themselves,  afford  but  an  equivocal 
support  to  moral  enthusiasm.  An  optimism  so 
persistent  and  unclouded  as  his  will  seem  at  vari- 
ance with  the  description  he  himself  gives  of  human 
life,  a  description  coloured  by  a  poetic  idealism, 
but  hardly  by  an  optimistic  bias. 

We  must  remember,  therefore,  that  this  opti- 
mism is  a  pious  tradition,  originally  justified  by 
the  belief  in  a  personal  God  and  in  a  providential 
government  of  affairs  for  the  ultimate  and  positive 
good  of  the  elect,  and  that  the  habit  of  worship 
survived  in  Emerson  as  an  instinct  after  those  posi- 
tive beliefs  had  faded  into  a  recognition  of  "  spirit- 


280  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

ual  laws."  We  must  remember  that  Calvinism  had 
known  how  to  combine  an  awestruck  devotion  to 
the  Supreme  Being  with  no  very  roseate  picture 
of  the  destinies  of  mankind,  and  for  more  than 
two  hundred  years  had  been  breeding  in  the  stock 
from  which  Emerson  came  a  willingness  to  be,  as 
the  phrase  is,  "  damned  for  the  glory  of  God." 

What  wonder,  then,  that  when,  for  the  former  in- 
exorable dispensation  of  Providence,  Emerson  sub- 
stituted his  general  spiritual  and  natural  laws,  he 
should  not  have  felt  the  spirit  of  worship  fail  within 
him  ?  On  the  contrary,  his  thought  moved  in  the 
presence  of  moral  harmonies  which  seemed  to  him 
truer,  more  beautiful,  and  more  beneficent  than 
those  of  the  old  theology.  An  independent  philos- 
opher would  not  have  seen  in  those  harmonies  an 
object  of  worship  or  a  sufRcient  basis  for  optimism. 
But  he  was  not  an  independent  philosopher,  in  spite 
of  his  belief  in  independence.  He  inherited  the 
problems  and  the  preoccupations  of  the  theology 
from  which  he  started,  being  in  this  respect  like 
the  German  idealists,  who,  with  all  their  pretence  of 
absolute  metaphysics,  were  in  reality  only  giving 
elusive  and  abstract  forms  to  traditional  theology. 
Emerson,  too,  was  not  primarily  a  philosopher, 
but  a  Puritan  mystic  with  a  poetic  fancy  and  a 
gift  for  observation  and  epigram,  and  he  saw  in  the 
laws  of  IS'ature,  idealized  by  his  imagination,  only 
a  more  intelligible  form   of  the   divinity  he  had 


EMERSON  281 

always  recognized  and  adored.  His  was  not  a" 
philosophy  passing  into  a  religion,  but  a  religion 
expressing  itself  as  a  philosophy  and  veiled,  as  at 
its  setting  it  descended  the  heavens,  in  various  tints 
of  poetry  and  science. 

If  we  ask  ourselves  what  was  Emerson's  relation 
to  the  scientific  and  religious  movements  of  his 
time,  and  what  place  he  may  claim  in  the  history 
of  opinion,  we  must  answer  that  he  belonged  very 
little  to  the  past,  very  little  to  the  present,  and 
almost  wholly  to  that  abstract  sphere  into  which 
mystical  or  philosophic  aspiration  has  carried  a 
few  men  in  all  ages.  The  religious  tradition  in 
which  he  was  reared  was  that  of  Puritanism,  but 
of  a  Puritanism  which,  retaining  its  moral  intensity 
and  metaphysical  abstraction,  had  minimized  its 
doctrinal  expression  and  become  Unitarian.  Emer- 
son was  indeed  the  Psyche  of  Puritanism,  "the 
latest-born  and  fairest  vision  far"  of  all  that 
"faded  hierarchy."  A  Puritan  whose  reli^^oji 
wag^jJLlpoetry,  a^et  whose  only  "pleasure._j8s:as 
thought,  he  showed  in  his  life  and  personality  the 
meagreness,  the  constraint,  the  frigid  and  conscious 
consecration  which  belonged  to  his  clerical  ances- 
tors, while  his  inmost  impersonal  spirit  ranged 
abroad  over  the  fields  of  history  and  Nature, 
gathering  what  ideas  it  might,  and  singing  its  little 
snatches  of  inspired  song. 

The  traditional  element  was  thus  rather  an  ex- 


232  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

ternal  and  unessential  contribution  to  Emerson's 
mind ;  lie  had  tlie  professional  tinge,  the  decorum, 
the  distinction  of  an  old-fashioned  divine ;  he  had 
also  the  habit  of  writing  sermons,  and  he  had  the 
national  pride  and  hope  of  a  religious  people  that 
felt  itself  providentially  chosen  to  establish  a  free 
and  godly  commonwealth  in  a  new  world.  For 
the  rest,  he  separated  himself  from  the  ancient 
creed  of  the  community  with  a  sense  rather  of 
relief  than  of  regret.  A  literal  belief  in  Christian 
doctrines  repelled  him  as  unspiritual,  as  manifest- 
ing no  understanding  of  the  meaning  which,  as 
allegories,  those  doctrines  might  have  to  a  philo- 
sophic and  poetical  spirit.  Although  as  a  clergy- 
man he  was  at  first  in  the  habit  of  referring  to 
the  Bible  and  its  lessons  as  to  a  supreme  authority, 
he  had  no  instinctive  sympathy  with  the  inspira- 
tion of  either  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament;  in 
Hafiz  or  Plutarch,  in  Plato  or  Shakespeare,  he 
found  more  congenial  stuff. 

While  he  thus  preferred  to  withdraw,  without 
rancour  and  without  contempt,  from  the  ancient 
fellowship  of  the  church,  he  assumed  an  attitude 
hardly  less  cool  and  deprecatory  toward  the  en- 
thusiasms of  the  new  era.  The  national  ideal  of 
democracy  and  freedom  had  his  entire  sympathy ; 
he  allowed  himself  to  be  drawn  into  the  movement 
against  slavery;  he  took  a  curious  and  smiling 
interest  in  the  discoveries  of  natural  science   and 


EMERSON  233 

in  the  material  progress  of  the  age.  But  he  could 
go  no  farther.  His  contemplative  nature,  his  reli- 
gious training,  his  dispersed  reading,  made  him 
stand  aside  from  the  life  of  the  world,  even  while 
he  studied  it  with  benevolent  attention.  His  heart 
was  fixed  on  eternal  things,  and  he  was  in  no 
sense  a  prophet /for  his  age  or  country.  He  be- 
longed by  nat;are  to  that  mystical  company  of 
devout  souls  that  recognize  no  particular  home 
and  are  dispersed  throughout  history,  although 
not  without  intercommunication.  He  felt  his 
affinity  to  the  Hindoos  and  the  Persians,  to  the 
Platonists  and  the  Stoics.  Like  them  he  re- 
mains "  a  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit."  If  not  a  star  of  the  first 
magnitude,  he  is  certainly  a  fixed  star  in  the 
firmament  of  philosophy.  Alone  as  yet  among 
Americans,  he  may  be  said  to  have  won  a  place 
there,  if  not  by  the  originality  of  his  thought,  at 
least  by  the  originality  and  beauty  of  the  expres- 
sion he  gave  to  thoughts  that  are  old  and  imperish- 
able. 


IX 

A  RELIGION  OF  DISILLUSION 

Man  has  henceforth  this  cause  of  pride :  that  he  has  he- 
thought  himself  of  justice  in  a  universe  without  justice^  and 
has  put  justice  there.  —  Jean  Lahor. 

The  break-up  of  traditional  systems  and  the 
disappearance  of  a  recognized  authority  from  the 
religious  world  have  naturally  led  to  many  at- 
tempts at  philosophic  reconstruction.  Most  of 
these  are  timid  compromises,  which  leave  first 
principles  untouched  and  contain  in  a  veiled  form 
all  the  old  contradictions.  Others  are  advertise- 
ments of  some  personal  notion,  some  fresh  discov- 
ery, proposed  as  a  panacea  and  as  an  equivalent 
for  all  the  heritage  of  human  wisdom.  A  few 
thinkers,  however,  inspired  by  more  comprehen- 
sive sympathies,  and  at  the  same  time  free  from 
preconceptions,  have  come  nearer  to  the  funda- 
mental elements  of  the  problem  and  have  given 
out  suggestions  which,  even  if  not  satisfactory  in 
their  actual  form,  are  helpful  and  interesting  in 
their  tendency.  Such  a  thinker  is  the  contempo- 
rary French  poet,  Jean  Lahor,  who,  in  a  volume 
234 


A  RELIGION  OF   DISILLUSION  235 

of  thoughts  entitled  "  La  gloire  du  ndant,"  has  gath- 
ered together  three  philosophical  points  of  view, 
we  might  almost  say  three  religions,  and  combined 
their  issues  in  a  way  which  may  now  seem  again 
new,  but  which  in  reality  is   as   old   as   wisdom. 

The  form  is  literary  and  the  outcome  in  a  sense 
negative;  there  is  no  attempt  to  put  new  wine 
into  old  bottles,  no  apologetic  tone,  no  unction. 
Experience  is  consulted  afresh,  withoiit  preoccu- 
pation as  to  the  results  of  reflection ;  and  if  these 
results  are  religious,  it  is  because  any  reasoned 
appreciation  of  life  is  bound  to  be  a  religion,  even 
if  no  conventionally  religious  elements  are  im- 
ported into  the  problem.  In  fact,  those  prophets 
who  have  said  that  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man 
and  who  have  given  moral  functions  to  historical 
religion,  as  well  as  those  philosophers  who  have 
best  understood  its  nature,  have  seemed  irreligious 
to  their  contemporaries,  because  they  have  looked 
upon  religion  as  an  interpretation  of  reality,  not 
as  a  quasi-real  ity  existing  by  itself  and  vouched 
for  merely  by  tradition  and  miracle.  Eeligion  is 
axi  imaginative  echo  of  things  natural  and  moral : 
and  if  this  echo  is  to  be  well  attuned,  our  ear 
must  first  be  attentive  to  the  natural  sounds  of 
which,  in  religion,  we  are  to  develop  the  har- 
mony. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  an  objection  to  Jean  Labor's 
competence  to  gather   for  us   the  elements  of  a 


236  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

religion  that  lie  is  a  poet  rather  than  a  theologian 
and  an  observer  rather  than  a  philosopher,  or  that 
he  presents  his  intuitions  without  technical  ap- 
paratus in  a  series  of  highly  coloured  epigrams 
and  little  pictures.  On  the  contrary,  such  sim- 
plicity and  directness  are  an  advantage  when,  as 
in  this  case,  the  guiding  inspiration  is  religious. 
It  is  religious  because,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  im- 
aginative; we  are  asking  ourselves  everywhere 
what  Nature  says  to  us  and  what  we  are  to  say 
in  reply;  and  on  the  other  hand,  because  it  is 
rational,  and  these  messages  and  reactions  are  to  be 
unified  into  a  single  science  and  a  single  morality. 
The  logical  scheme  of  the  system  is  not  made  ex- 
plicit :  there  is  no  argumentation  and  no  answers  are 
offered  to  the  objections  that  might  naturally  sug- 
gest themselves.  But  the  sayings  are  so  arranged 
and  made  so  to  progress  in  tone  and  subject  that 
a  system  of  philosophy  is  clearly  implied  in  them ; 
and  the  essence  of  this  system  is  at  times  briefly 
expressed. 

All,  as  it  behooves  a  poet,  is  the  transcript 
of  personal  experience.  We  must  not  look  for 
the  inclusion  of  elements,  however  important  in 
themselves,  which  the  author  has  not  found  in 
his  own  life.  The  omissions  are  in  this  case 
as  characteristic  as  the  inclusions.  We  look 
in  vain,  for  instance,  for  any  appreciation  of 
Christianity  or  of  all  that  side  of  human  nature 


A  EELiaiON  OF  DISILLUSION  237 

and  experience  on  which  faith  in  Christianity 
rests;  we  hear  nothing  of  love  and  its  ideal  sug- 
gestions, nothing  of  the  aspiration  to  immortal- 
ity, nothing  of  the  whole  transcendental  attitude 
toward  experience.  These  are  grave  omissions. 
They  may  seem  to  condemn  Jean  Lahor,  if  not  as 
a  general  philosopher,  at  least  as  a  representative 
of  an  age  in  which  religious  thought  has  so  largely 
centred  about  these  very  questions.  But  our  cen- 
tury has  been  an  age  of  confusion;  and  a  man 
who  at  its  end  wishes  to  attain  some  coherence  of 
life  and  mind,  must  begin  by  letting  drop  much 
that  the  age  has  held  in  solution.  It  is  by  not 
being  an  average  that  a  man  may  become  a  guide. 
Only  by  manifesting  the  direction  of  change  and 
embodying  that  change  in  his  own  person  can  he 
be  a  sign  of  progress.  It  remains  for  time  to 
show  whether  what  survives  in  a  given  man  has 
fortune  on  its  side  and  contains  the  inward  ele- 
ments of  vitality.  The  presumption  in  this  case, 
when  we  abstract  from  our  personal  prejudices, 
will  seem  to  be  wholly  in  favour  of  our  author. 

The  three  influences  to  which  he  has  yielded 
and  which  have  moulded  his  mind  are  the  pan- 
theism of  the  Hindoos,  our  contemporary  natural 
science,  and  the  ideal  of  Greek  civilization.  These  "^ 
three  elements  might  at  first  sight  seem  incongru- 
ous, and  the  principle  of  selection  by  which  they  are 
preferred  above  all  others  might  seem  as  hard  to 


V 


238  POETBY  AND   RELIGION 

find  as  the  principle  of  union  by  which  they  are  to 
be  welded  into  one  philosophy.  But  a  little  study 
of  these  maxims  and  of  the  autobiographical  sketch 
which  precedes  them  will,  I  think,  enable  us  to 
discover  both  the  principles  we  miss.  The  selec- 
tion of  the  three  influences  in  question  is  due  to  the 
poetical  temperament  and  scientific  tastes  of  the 
author,  to  an  individual  disposition  and  to  studies 
which  drew  him  successively  to  these  different 
sources  of  instruction.  The  principle  of  synthesis, 
or  rather,  we  should  perhaps  say,  of  subordination, 
by  which  these  various  habits  of  thought  are  com- 
bined in  one  philosophy,  is  a  moral  principle.  It 
is  a  native  power  to  conceive  the  ideal  and  a  native 
loyalty  to  the  ideal  when  once  conceived.  This 
moral  enthusiasm  is  in  no  sense  vapid  or  sentimen- 
tal; it  hardly  comes  to  the  surface  in  any  direct 
or  enthusiastic  expression ;  but  it  is  betrayed  and 
proved  to  be  sincere,  now  by  a  passionate  pessi- 
mism about  the  natural  world,  now  in  detailed  and 
practical  demands  for  a  better  state  of  society.  A 
genial  individuality  and  a  well-reasoned  form  of 
pessimism  are,  then,  the  two  factors  in  the  devel- 
opment of  this  interesting  thinker,  the  two  keys 
to  the  apparently  contradictory  affinities  of  his 
mind. 

Our  author,  as  we  have  said,  is  a  poet,  and  even 
if  his  verses  seem  at  times  a  little  thin  and  rhetori- 
cal, they  prove  abundantly  what  is  evident  also  in 


A   RELIGION   OF   DISILLUSION  239 

his  prose,  namely,  that  he  has  keen  sensations,  that 
images  impress  themselves  upon  him  with  force, 
and  that  any  scene  whose  elements  are  gorgeous 
and  picturesque  or  which  is  weighted  with  tragic 
emotion,  holds  his  attention  and  awakens  in  him 
the  impulse  to  literary  expression.  But  this  plastic 
impulse  is  not  powerful,  or  finds  in  the  environ- 
ment insufficient  support.  Great  art  and  great 
creative  achievements  are  rare  in  the  world,  and 
come  for  the  most  part  only  in  those  moments  and 
in  those  places  where  an  unusual  concentration  of 
mental  energy  and  the  friction  of  many  kindred 
minds  allow  the  scattered  sparks  of  inspiration  to 
merge  and  to  leap  into  flame.  We  need  not 
wonder,  therefore,  that  the  aesthetic  sensibility  of 
our  author  is  greater  than  his  artistic  success.  Of 
which  of  our  contemporaries  might  we  not  say  the 
same  thing?  Jean  Lahor's  attention  is  analytic;, 
he  is  absorbed  by  his  model,  he  does  not  absorb  it 
and  master  it  by  his  art.  He  has  not  enough  vigour 
and  determination  of  thought  to  create  eternal 
forms  out  of  the  swift  hints  of  perception.  He 
watches  rather  passively  the  flight  of  his  ideas, 
conscious  of  their  vivacity,  of  their  beauty,  but 
most  of  all,  alas !  of  their  flight.  His  last  word  as 
an  observer,  his  laessage  as  a  poet  is  that  aH 
things  are  illusion.  They  fade,  they  pass  into  one 
another,  the  place  thereof  knows  them  no  more. 
Nothing  of  them  remains,  absolutely  nothing,  save 


240  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

the  universal  indeterminate  force  that  breeds  and 
devours  them  perpetually. 

A  mind  thus  gifted  and  thus  limited  would  natu- 
rally feel  its  affinity  to  Oriental  pantheism  as  soon 
as  that  phase  of  thought  and  feeling  came  within 
the  radius  of  its  vision.  Jean  Lahor  seems  early 
to  have  felt  an  attraction  toward  the  speculation 
of  the  East,  and  his  prolonged  study  of  that  litera- 
ture could  of  course  only  intensify  the  natural  bent 
of  his  mind,  and  give  his  thought  a  more  pro- 
nounced pantheistic  colouring.  Had  he  been  wholly 
absorbed,  however,  in  such  mystical  contemplation, 
we  should  have  had  little  to  study  in  him  that  was 
new ;  only  one  more  case  of  sensibility  and  fancy 
overpowering  a  timid  intellect,  one  more  gifted 
nature  arrested  at  the  stage  of  bewilderment. 

But  as  Jean  Lahor  is  only  a  pseudonym  for  the 
man,  so  the  sympathy  with  India  which  that  name 
indicates  is  only  one  phase  of  the  thinker.  Our 
poet  pursued  the  study  of  medicine ;  he  realized  in 
the  concrete  the  orderly  complexities  of  natural  law 
and  the  sordid  realities  of  human  life.  The  vague, 
sensuous  enthusiasm  with  which  he  had  followed 
the  flux  of  images  in  his  fancy  was  now  sobered  by 
an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  miseries,  the  defeats, 
the  shames  that  lie  beneath.  His  poetic  sense  of 
illusion  was  deepened  into  a  moral  sense  of  wrong. 
The  same  keenness  of  perception,  the  same  power  of 
graphic  expression,  which  had  made  him  dwell  on 


A  RELIGION  OF  DISILLUSION  241 

the  luxuriance  of  Nature  now  made  liim  paint  the 
irony  and  brutality  of  life.  There  is  here  and  there 
a  touch  of  bitterness  and  exaggeration  in  the  satire, 
as  if  the  man  of  science  felt  a  personal  resentment 
against  a  world  that  had  so  cheated  the  poet. 

Yet  the  two  descriptions  are  far  from  inconsist- 
ent; we  have  merely  learned  to  understand  as  a 
process  and  to  conceive  as  an  inner  experience  what 
before  we  had  admired  as  a  spectacle.  A  scien- 
tific view  has  come  to  give  definition  and  coherence 
to  phenomena  which  a  poetical  pantheism  merely 
saluted  as  they  passed  and  disappeared  into  the 
primordial  darkness,  or,  if  you  like,  into  the  pri- 
mordial light.  The  two  systems  differ  in  tone  and 
in  method,  but  not  in  result.  Natural  science,  like 
pantheism,  presents  ns  with  a  universal  flux,  in 
which  something,  we  known  not  what,  moves,  we 
know  not  why,  we  know  not  whither.  The  method 
of  this  transformation  may  be  more  or  less  accu- 
rately described,  the  general  sense  of  continuity 
and  necessity  may  find  a  more  or  less  specific  ex- 
pression in  the  various  fields  of  experience ;  yet  the 
outcome  is  still  the  same  whirligig.  We  find  our- 
selves in  either  case  confronted  by  the  same  gloire 
du  n4ant,  by  a  nothing  that  lives  and  that  is  beauti- 
ful in  its  nothingness. 
y^These  two  elements  in  Jean  Labor's  philosophy, 
V  the  Oriental  and  the  scientific,  would  thus  tend  alike 
(  to  represent  man  with  his  intelligence  as  the  pro- 


242  t»OETRy   AND   RELIGION 

duct  and  the  captive  of  an  irrational  engine  called 
the  universe.  Many  a  man  accepts  this  solution 
and  reconciles  himself  as  best  he  can  to  the  truth 
as  it  appears  to  him.  What  is  there,  he  may  say, 
so  dreadful  in  mutability  ?  What  so  intolerable  in 
ultimate  ignorance?  We  know  what  we  need  to 
know,  and  things  last,  perhaps,  as  long  as  they 
deserve  to  last.  So,  once  convinced  that  his 
naturalistic  philosophy  is  final,  a  man  will  silence 
the  demands  of  his  own  reason  and  call  them  chi- 
merical. There  is  nothing  to  which  men,  while  they 
have  food  and  drink,  cannot  reconcile  themselves. 
They  will  put  up  with  present  suffering,  with  the 
certainty  of  death,  with  solitude,  with  shame,  with 
wrong,  with  the  expectation  of  eternal  damnation. 
In  the  face  of  such  things,  they  can  not  only  be 
happy  for  the  moment,  but  solemnly  thank  God 
for  having  brought  them  into  existence.  Habit 
is  stronger  than  reason,  and  the  respect  for  fact 
stronger  than  the  respect  for  the  ideal ;  nor  would 
the  ideal  and  reason  ever  prevail  did  they  not  make 
up  in  persistence  what  they  lack  in  momentary 
energy. 

It  would  have  been  easy,  therefore,  for  Jean 
Labor,  as  for  the  rest  of  us,  to  remain  in  the 
naturalistic  world,  had  he  had  only  poetical  intui- 
tion, or  only  scientific  training,  or  only  both.  But 
there  was  also  in  him  a  third  and  a  moral  element, 
an  impulse  toward  ideal  creation,  a  spark  of  Prome- 


(  nNTVEHSTTT   / 
A   RELIGION   OF   DISILLITSION  243 

thean  fire.  He  felt  a  genuine  admiration  for  that 
humane  courage  which  made  the  Greeks,  for  all 
their  clear  consciousness  of  fate,  hopeful  without 
illusions  and  independent  without  rebellion.  In 
the  bosom  of  the  intractable  infinite  he  still  dis- 
tinguished the  work  of  human  reason  —  the  cosmos 
of  society,  character,  and  art  —  like  a  Noah's  ark 
floating  in  the  Deluge.  His  imagination  had  suc- 
cumbed to  the  dream  of  sense;  his  art  had  not 
attempted  the  task  of  imposing  a  meaning  or  an 
immortal  form  upon  Nature:  but  his  conscience 
and  his  political  instinct  had  held  out  against  the 
fascinations  of  Maya.  The  Greek  asserted  himself 
here  against  the  barbarian,  the  moralist  against  the 
naturalist.  Nor  was  this  a  merely  accidental  addi- 
tion or  an  inconsistency.  It  was  the  explicit  ex- 
pression of  that  creative  reason  which  had  all  along 
chafed  under  the  dominion  of  brute  fact  and  of 
perpetual  illusion.  The  same  moral  energy  which 
had  made  him  a  pessimist  in  the  presence  of  Nature 
made  him  an  idealist  at  the  threshold  of  life. 

For  why  should  the  natural  world  ever  come  to 
be  called  a  world  of  illusion?  To  call  the  vivid 
objects  of  sense  illusory  is  to  compare  them  to 
their  disadvantage  with  something  else  which  we 
conceive  as  more  worthy  of  the  title  of  reality. 
This  deeper  reality  must  be  something  ideal,  some- 
thing permanent,  something  conceived  by  the  in- 
tellect, and  which  only  a  man  having  faith  in  the 


244  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

intellect  could  prefer  to  the  objects  of  sense  or 
fancy.  The  Hindoos  that  our  author  thinks  so 
much  akin  to  himself  would  hardly  understand 
this  rational  bias  of  his  thought,  this  foregone 
dissatisfaction  with  a  world  of  infinite  change  and 
indefinite  structure.  They  would  accept  as  a  natu- 
ral fact  that  perpetual  flux  which  he  emphasizes 
as  a  paradox  and  laments  as  a  calamity.  In  spite 
of  his  studied  immersion  in  sensuous  illusion,  he 
is  still  a  native  of  the  sphere  of  intelligible  things, 
and  it  is  only  the  difficulty  of  finding  the  perma- 
nent beings  which  he  is  inclined  to  look  for  and 
in  the  presence  of  which  he  could  alone  rest,  that 
makes  him  linger  with  tragic  self-consciousness 
in  the  region  of  fleeting  shadows.  Accordingly  we 
need  not  be  surprised  by  the  somewhat  forced  and 
pessimistic  note  of  a  pantheism  which  is  really 
exotic,  and  we  may  be  prepared  to  find  the  plastic 
mind  asserting  itself  ultimately  against  that  sys- 
tem. So  Jean  Labor,  after  the  groups  of  thoughts 
which  he  puts  under  the  title  of  "L'orient"  and 
"  Le  ciel  du  Nord,"  adds  another  group  under  the 
title  of  "  Cosmos." 

It  would  require  a  philosophical  treatise  of 
greater  pretentions  than  the  little  book  before 
us  to  explain  fully  how  this  cosmos  can  arise  out 
of  the  chaos  of  mechanical  forces,  and  how  the 
life  and  the  work  of  reason  can  be  superposed 
upon   the   life   of    sense    and    imagination.      Our 


A   RELIGION   OF   DISILLUSION  245 

author's  vision,  fixed  as  it  is  on  concrete  images 
and  expressed  in  detached  epigrams,  does  not 
always  extend  to  the  philosophical  relations  of 
his  thoughts.  Yet  he  offers,  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, an  admirable  variation  of  that  revolu- 
tion of  thought  which  is  associated  with  the  name 
of  Kant.  He  proposes  to  us  as  the  work  of  human 
intelligence  what  is  commonly  believed  to  be  the 
work  of  God.  The  universe,  apart  from  us,  is  a 
chaos,  but  it  may  be  made  a  cosmos  by  our  efforts 
and  in  our  own  minds.  The  laws  of  events,  apart 
from  us,  are  inhuman  and  irrational,  but  in  the 
sphere  of  human  activity  they  may  be  dominated 
by  reason.  We  are  a  part  of  the  blind  energy 
behind  Nature,  but  by  virtue  of  that  energy  we  im- 
pose our  purposes  on  the  part  of  Nature  which  we 
constitute  or  control.  We  can  turn  from  the 
stupefying  contemplation  of  an  alien  universe  to 
the  building  of  our  own  house,  knowing  that,  alien 
as  it  is,  that  universe  has  chanced  to  blow  its 
energy  also  into  our  will  and  to  allow  itself  to 
be  partially  dominated  by  our  intelligence.  Our 
mere  existence  and  the  modicum  of  success  we 
have  attained  in  society,  science,  and  art  are  the 
living  proofs  of  this  human  power.  The  exercise 
of  this  power  is  the  task  appointed  for  us  by  the 
indomitable  promptings  of  our  own  spirit,  a  task 
in  which  we  need  not  labour  without  hope. 

For  as   the  various   plants   and    animals    have 


246  POETKY   AND   RELIGION 

found  foothold  and  room  to  grow,  maintaining  for 
long  periods  the  life  congenial  to  them,  so  the 
human  race  may  be  able  to  achieve  something  like 
its  perfection  and  its  ideal,  maintaining  for  an 
indefinite  time  all  that  it  values,  not  by  virtue  of 
an  alleged  intentional  protection  of  Providence, 
but  by  its  own  watchful  art  and  exceptional  good 
fortune.  The  ideal  is  itself  a  function  of  the 
reality  and  cannot  therefore  be  altogether  out  of 
harmony  with  the  conditions  of  its  own  birth 
and  persistence.  Civilization  is  precarious,  but 
it  need  not  be  short-lived.  Its  inception  is  already 
a  proof  that  there  exists  an  equilibrium  of  forces 
which  is  favourable  to  its  existence;  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  this  equilibrium  to  be  less 
stable  than  that  which  keeps  the  planets  revolving 
in  their  orbits.  There  is  no  impossibility,  there- 
fore, in  the  hope  that  the  human  will  may  have 
time  to  understand  itself,  and,  having  understood 
itself,  to  realize  the  objects  of  its  rational  desire. 

We  see  that  the  "  Cosmos '^  here  invoked  is 
not  inconsistent  with  the  "Nothingness''  before 
described.  It  is  a  triumph  amid  illusions,  an  order 
within  c];iaos,  la  gloire  du  n4ant.  This  hint  of  a 
reconciliation  between  the  practical  optimism  nat- 
ural to  an  active  being,  and  the  speculative  pes- 
simism inevitable  to  an  intelligent  one,  is  happier 
than  the  muddled  solutions  of  the  same  problem 
with  which  current  philosophies  have  made  us  fa- 


A  RELIGION   OF  DISILLUSION  247 

miliar.     The  philosophy  suggested  by  Jean  Lahor') 
is  that  of  Spinoza,  if  we  subtract  from  the  lattery 
its  mystical  optimism,  and  add  a  broad  appreciarN 
tion  of  human  culture.     Man   cannot  attain  his 
happiness  by  conforming  to  that  which  is  hostile 
to  himself;   he  can  thus  attain  only  his  dissolu- 
tion.    But  by  using  what  is  hostile  to  himself  for 
his  own  ends,  as  far  as  his  energy  extends,  he  can 
make  an  oasis  for  himself  in  Nature,  and  being  at 
peace  with  himself,  be  at  peace  also  with  her. 

Such  a  view  has  some  relation  to  the  real  condi- 
tions of  human  life  and  progress.  What  is  called 
the  higher  optimism,  on  the  contrary,  commonly 
consists  in  recounting  all  the  evils  of  existence 
with  a  radiant  countenance,  and  telling  us  that 
they  are  all  divine  ministers  of  some  glorious  con- 
summation ;  but  what  this  consummation  is  never 
appears,  and  we  are  reduced  in  practice  to  a  mere 
glorification  of  impulse.  We  are  simply  invited 
to  accept  the  conditions  of  life  as  they  are,  and 
to  find  in  incidental  successes  a  compensation  for 
incidental  or  —  as  we  should  say  if  we  were  sin- 
cere—  for  essential  failures.  Such  an  optimism 
impairs  by  a  kind  of  philosophic  Nature-worship 
that  moral  loyalty  which  consists  in  giving  the 
highest  honour  to  the  highest,  not  to  the  strongest, 
things.  It  substitutes,  as  pantheism  must,  the 
study  of  tendencies  for  the  study  of  ends,  and  the 
dignity  of  success  for  the  dignity  of  justice. 


248  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

This  moral  confusion  our  author  avoids  by  his 
greater  sincerity.  He  has  understood  how  funda- 
mentally that  man  is  a  dupe  who  does  not  begin  by 
settling  his  accounts  with  Despair.  There  is  no 
safety  in  lies ;  there  is  no  safety  even  in  "  postu- 
lates." Let  the  worst  of  the  truth  appear,  and 
when  it  has  once  seen  the  light,  let  it  not  be  im- 
mediately wrapped  up  again  in  the  swaddling 
clothes  of  an  equivocal  rhetoric.  In  such  a  dis- 
ingenuous course  there  is  both  temerity  and  cow- 
ardice :  temerity  in  throwing  away  the  opportunity, 
always  afforded  by  the  recognition  of  fact,  of  culti- 
vating the  real  faculties  of  human  nature ;  coward- 
ice in  not  being  willing  to  face  with  patience  and 
dignity  the  situation  in  which  fate  appears  to  have 
put  us.  That  Nature  is  immense,  that  her  laws 
are  mechanical,  that  the  existence  and  well-being 
of  man  upon  earth  are,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  universe,  an  indifferent  incident,  —  all  this  is 
in  the  first  place  to  be  clearly  recognized.  It  is 
the  lesson  which  both  poetic  contemplation  and 
practical  science  had  taught  Jean  Labor. 

Had  he  stopped  to  subject  his  opinion  to  meta- 
physical criticism,  he  would  not,  I  think,  have  found 
reason  to  change  it.  To  subjectify  the  universe  is 
not  to  improve  it,  much  less  to  dissolve  it.  The 
space  I  call  my  idea  has  all  the  properties  of  the 
space  I  called  my  environment;  it  has  the  same  inev- 
itable presence  and  the  same  fundamental  validity. 


A  RELIGION  OP  DISILLUSION  249 

Because  it  is  a  law  of  our  intelligence  that  two  and 
two  make  four,  and  the  implications  of  that  law 
may  be  traced  by  abstract  thought,  the  world 
which  is  subject  to  that  arithmetical  principle  is 
not  made  more  amenable  to  our  higher  demands 
than  if  it  had  been  arithmetical  of  its  own  sweet 
will.  It  is  not  made  docile  by  being  called  our 
creature.  Indeed,  what  is  less  docile  to  us  than 
ourselves  ?  what  less  subject  to  our  correction  than 
the  foundations  of  our  own  being?  So  when  the 
Kantian  philosophy  teaches  us  to  look  upon  the 
enveloping  universe  as  a  figment  of  the  under- 
standing and  on  its  laws  as  results  of  mental 
synthesis  and  inference,  we  are  still  pursued  by 
the  inevitable  presence  of  that  figment  and  con- 
fronted involuntarily  by  that  result.  Nay,  the 
conditions  of  our  thought,  like  the  predispositions 
of  our  characters,  are  the  most  fatal  and  inexorable 
of  our  limitations. 

Why  the  world  is   as  it  is,   whether  of  itself 
or  by  refraction  in  the  medium  of  our  intellect, 
is  not  a  question  that  affects  the  practical  mor- 
alist.    What  concerns   him   is  that  the   laws   of 
the  world,  whatever  their  origin,  are   fixed  and 
unchangeable   conditions   of  our  happiness.      We  ) 
cannot  change  the  world,  even  if  we  boast  to  have  \ 
made  it ;  we  must  in  any  case  learn  to  live  with  it, 
whether  it  be  our  parent  or  our  child.     To  veil  it3V 
character  with  euphemisms  or  to  supply  its  defects' 


260  POETRY   AND  RELIGION 

with  superstitious  assumptions  is  a  course  unworthy 
of  a  brave  man  and  abhorrent  to  a  prudent  one. 
What  we  should  do  is  to  make  a  modest  inven- 
tory of  our  possessions  and  a  just  estimate  of  our 
powers  in  order  to  apply  both,  wdth  what  strength 
we  have,  to  the  realization  of  our  ideals  in  society, 
in  art,  and  in  science.  These  will  constitute  our 
Cosmos.  In  building  it  —  for  there  is  none  other 
that  builds  it  for  us  —  we  shall  be  carrying  on  the 
work  of  the  only  race  that  has  yet  seriously  at- 
tempted to  live  rationally,  the  race  to  which  we 
owe  the  name  and  the  idea  of  a  Cosmos,  as  well  as 
the  beginnings  of  its  realization.  We  shall  then 
be  making  that  rare  advance  in  wisdom  which  con- 
sists in  abandoning  our  illusions  the  better  to  attain 
our  ideals. 


-^ 


THE  ELEMENTS  AND  FUNCTION   OF 
POETRY 

If  a  critic,  in  despair  of  giving  a  serious  delB- 
nition  of  poetry,  should  be  satisfied  with  saying 
that  poetry  is  metrical  discourse,  he  would  no 
doubt  be  giving  an  inadequate  account  of  the 
matter,  yet  not  one  of  which  he  need  be  ashamed 
or  which  he  should  regard  as  superficial.  Although 
a  poem  be  not  made  by  counting  of  syllables  upon 
the  fingers,  yet  "numbers"  is  the  most  poetical 
synonym  we  have  for  verse,  and  "measure"  the 
most  significant  equivalent  for  beauty,  for  good- 
ness, and  perhaps  even  for  truth.  Those  early  and 
profound  philosophers,  the  followers  of  Pythagoras, 
saw  the  essence  of  all  things  in  number,  and  it 
was  by  weight,  measure,  and  number,  as  we  read 
in  the  Bible,  that  the  Creator  first  brought  Nature 
out  of  the  void.  Every  human  architect  must  do 
likewise  with  his  edifice ;  he  must  mould  his  bricks 
or  hew  his  stones  into  symmetrical  solids  and  lay 
them  over  one  another  in  regular  strata,  like  a 
poet's  lines. 

261 


252  POETRY   AND   EELIGION 

Measure  is  a  condition  of  perfection,  for  per- 
fection requires  that  order  should  be  pervasive, 
that  not  only  the  whole  before  us  should  have 
a  form,  but  that  every  part  in  turn  should  have  a 
form  of  its  own,  and  that  those  parts  should  be 
coordinated  among  themselves  as  the  whole  is 
coordinated  with  the  other  parts  of  some  greater 
cosmos.  Leibnitz  lighted  in  his  speculations  upon 
a  conception  of  organic  nature  which  may  be  false 
as  a  fact,  but  which  is  excellent  as  an  ideal;  he 
tells  us  that  the  difference  between  living  and  dead 
matter,  between  animals  and  machines,  is  that  the 
former  are  composed  of  parts  that  are  themselves 
organic,  every  portion  of  the  body  being  itself  a 
machine,  and  every  portion  of  that  machine  still 
a  machine,  and  so  ad  infiyiitum;  whereas,  in  arti- 
ficial bodies  the  organization  is  not  in  this  manner 
infinitely  deep.  Fine  Art,  in  this  as  in  all  things,  . 
imitates  the  method  of  Nature  and  makes  its  most 
beautiful  works  out  of  materials  that  are  them-  - 
selves  beautiful.  So  that  even  if  the  difference  be-  . 
tween  verse  and  prose  consisted  only  in  measure, . 
that  difference  would  already  be  analogous  to  that 
between  jewels  and  clay. 

The  stuff  of  language  is  words,  and  the  sensuous 
material  of  words  is  sound ;  if  language  therefore 
is  to  be  made  perfect,  its  materials  must  be  made 
beautiful  by  being  themselvessubiected  to  a  meas- 
1iS85|!~an3~~'BTnitT#ed"with^'a  It^rs^^true  that 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  253 

language  is  a  symbol  for  intelligence  rather  than 
a  stimulus  to  sense,  and  accordingly  the  beauties 
of  discourse  which  commonly  attract  attention  are 
merely  the  beauties  of  the  objects  and  ideas  signi- 
fied; yet  the  symbols  have  a  sensible  reality  of 
their  own,  a  euphony  which  appeals  to  our  senses 
if  we  keep  them  open.  The  tongue  will  choose 
those  forms  of  utterance  which  have  a  natural 
grace  as  mere  sound  and  sensation;  the  mem- 
ory will  retain  these  catches,  and  they  will  pass 
and  repass  through  the  mind  until  they  become 
types  of  instinctive  speech  and  standards  of  pleas- 
ing expression. 

The  highest  form  of  such  euphony  is  song;  the 
singing  voice  gives  to  the  sounds  it  utters  the  thrill 
of  tonality,  —  a  thrill  itself  dependent,  as  we  know, 
on  the  numerical  proportions  of  the  vibrations  that 
it  includes.  But  this  kind  of  euphony  and  sensu- 
ous beauty,  the  deepest  that  sounds  can  have,  we 
have  almost  wholly  surrendered  in  our  speech.  Our 
intelligence  has  become  complex,  and  language,  to 
express  our  thoughts,  must  commonly  be  more 
rapid,  copious,  and  abstract  than  is  compatible  with 
singing.  Music  at  the  same  time  has  become  com- 
plex also,  and  when  united  with  words,  at  one  time 
disfigures  them  in  the  elaboration  of  its  melody, 
and  at  another  overpowers  them  in  the  volume  of 
its  sound.  So  that  the  art  of  singing  is  now  in  the 
same  plight  as  that  of  sculpture,  —  an  abstract  and 


254  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

conventional  thing  surviving  by  force  of  tradition 
and  of  an  innate  but  now  impotent  impulse,  which 
under  simpler  conditions  would  work  itself  out  into 
the  proper  forms  of  those  arts.  The  truest  kind  of 
euphony  is  thus  denied  to  our  poetry.  If  any 
verses  are  still  set  to  music,  they  are  commonly  the 
worst  only,  chosen  for  the  purpose  by  musicians  of 
specialized  sensibility  and  inferior  intelligence,  who 
seem  to  be  attracted  only  by  tawdry  effects  of 
•^jhetoric  and  sentiment. 

When  song  is  given  up,  there  still  remains  in 
speech  a  certain  sensuous  quality,  due  to  the  nature 
and  order  of  the  vowels  and  consonants  that  com- 
pose the  sounds.  This  kind  of  euphony  is  not 
neglected  by  the  more  dulcet  poets,  and  is  now  so 
studied  in  some  quarters  that  I  have  heard  it  main- 
tained by  a  critic  of  relative  authority  that  the 
beauty  of  poetry  consists  entirely  in  the  frequent 
utterance  of  the  sound  of  "  j  "  and  "  sli,"  and  the 
consequent  copious  flow  of  saliva  in  the  mouth. 
But  even  if  saliva  is  not  the  whole  essence  of 
poetry,  there  is  an  unmistakable  and  fundamental 
diversity  of  effect  in  the  various  vocalization  of 
different  poets,  which  becomes  all  the  more  evident 
when  we  compare  those  who  use  different  languages. 
One  man's  speech,  or  one  nation's,  is  compact, 
crowded  with  consonants,  rugged,  broken  with 
emphatic  beats ;  another  man's,  or  nation's,  is  open, 
tripping,  rapid,  and  even.     So  Byron,  mingling  in 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF    POETRY  255 

his  boyish  fashion  burlesque  with  exquisite  senti- 
ment, contrasts  English  with  Italian  speech  :  — 

*'  I  love  the  language,  that  soft  bastard  Latin 
Which  melts  like  kisses  from  a  female  mouth 
And  sounds  as  if  it  should  be  writ  on  satin 
With  syllables  which  breathe  of  the  sweet  South, 
And  gentle  liquids  gliding  all  so  pat  in 
That  not  a  single  accent  seems  uncouth, 
Like  our  harsh  Northern  whistling,  grunting  guttural/ 
Which  we're  obliged  to  hiss  and  spit  and  sputter  all." 

And.  yet  these  contrasts,  strong  when  we  com- 
pare extreme  cases,  fade  from  our  consciousness  in 
the  actual  use  of  a  mother-tongue.  The  function 
makes  us  unconscious  of  the  instrument,  all  the 
more  as  it  is  an  indispensable  and  almost  invaria- 
ble one.  The  sense  of  euphony  accordingly  attaches 
itself  rather  to  another  and  more  ^ariable  quality ; 
the  tune,  or  measure,  or  rhythm  'of  speech.  The 
elementary  sounds  are  prescribed  ^y  the  language 
we  use,  and  the  selection  we  may  mak^  among  those 
sounds  is  limited  ;  but  the  arrangement  of  words  is 
still  undetermined,  and  by  casting  our  speech  into 
the  moulds  of  metre  and  rhyme  we  can  give  it  a 
heightened  power,  apart  from  its  significance.  A 
tolerable  definition  of  poatry,  on  its  formal  side, 
might  be  found  in  this  /that  poetry  is  speech  in 
which  the  instrument  coimts  as  well  as  the  mean- 
ing —  poetry^  speech  for  its  own  sake  and  for  its 
own  sweetness.!    As  common  windows  are  intended 


256  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

only  to  admit  the  light,  but  painted  windows  also 
to  dye  it,  and  to  be  an  object  of  attention  in  them- 
selves as  well  as  a  cause  of  visibility  in  other  things, 
so,  (while  the  purest  prose  is  a  mere  vehicle  of 
/^thought,  verse,  likestanied  sla,ss,  arrests  attention 
(in  its  own  intricacieSjConfuaes  it,  in  its  oaml^j^Tf^fis^ 
and  is  even  at  times  allowed  to  darken  and  puzzle 
in  the  hope  of  casting  over  us  a  supernatural  spell. 
Long  passages  in  Shelley's  "Kevolt  of  Islam" 
and  Keats'  "  Endymion  "  are  poetical  in  this  sense ; 
the  reader  gathers,  probably,  no  definite  meaning, 
but  is  conscious  of  a  poetic  medium,  of  speech 
euphonious  and  measured,  and  redolent  of  a  kind 
of  objectless  passion  which  is  little  more  than  the 
sensation  of  the  movement  and  sensuous  richness 
of  the  lines.  Such  poetry  is  not  great ;  it  has,  in 
fact,  a  tedious  vacuity,  and  is  unworthy  of  a  mature 
mind;  but  it  is  poetical,  and  could  be  produced 
only  by  a  legitimate  child  of  the  Muse.  It  belongs 
to  an  apprenticeship,  but  in  this  case  the  appren- 
ticeship of  genius.  It  bears  that  relation  to  great 
poems  which  scales  and  aimless  warblings  bear  to 
great  singing  —  they  test  the  essential  endowment 
and  fineness  of  the  organ  which  is  to  be  employed 
in  the  art.  Without  this  sensuous  background  and 
ingrained  predisposition  to  beauty,  no  art  can  reach 
the  deepest  and  most  exquisite  effects;  and  even 
without  an  intelligible  superstructure  these  sensu- 
ous qualities  suffice  to  give  that  thrill  of  exaltation, 


THE   ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  257 

that  suggestion  of  an  ideal  world,  which  we  feel  in 
the  presence  of  any  true  beauty. 

The  sensuous  beauty  of  words  and  their  utter- 
ance in  measure  suffice,  therefore,  for  poetry  of  one 
sort  —  where  these  are  there  is  something  unmis- 
takably poetical,  although  the  whole  of  poetry,  or 
the  best  of  poetry,  be  not  yet  there.  Indeed,  in 
such  works  as  "  The  Kevolt  of  Islam ''  or  ^^  Endym- 
ion"  there  is  already  more  than  mere  metre  and 
sound ;  there  is  the  colour  and  choice  of  words,  the 
fanciful,  rich,  or  exquisite  juxtaposition  of  phrases. 
The  vocabulary  and  the  texture  of  the  style  are 
precious ;  affected,  perhaps,  but  at  any  rate  refined. 

This  quality,  which  is  that  almost  exclusively 
exploited  by  the  Symbolist,  we  may  call  euphu- 
ism—  the  choice  of  coloured  words  and  rare  and 
elliptical  phrases.  If  great  poets  are  like  archi- 
tects and  sculptors,  the  euphuists  are  like  gold- 
smiths and  jewellers;  their  work  is  filigree  in 
precious  metals,  encrusted  with  glowing  stones. 
Now  euphuism  contributes  not  a  little  to  the  poetic 
effect  of  the  tirades  of  Keats  and  Shelley;  if  we 
wish  to  see  the  power  of  versification  without  eu- 
phuism we  may  turn  to  the  tirades  of  Pope,  where 
metre  and  euphony  are  displayed  alone,  and  we 
have  the  outline  or  skeleton  of  poetry  without  the 
filling. 

"  In  spite  of  pride,  in  erring  reason's  spite, 
One  truth  is  clear,  Whatever  is,  is  right." 

8 


>^       258  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

/    We  should  hesitate  to  say  that  such  writing  was 
/  truly  poetical ;  so  that  some  euphuism  would  seem 
:'    to  be  necessary  as  well   as   metre,  to  the  formal 
essence  of  poetry. 

An  example  of  this  sort,  however,  takes  us  out 
of  the  merely  verbal  into  the  imaginative  region; 
the  reason  that  Pope  is  hardly  poetical  to  us  is  not 
that  he  is  inharmonious,  —  not  a  defect  of  euphony, 
—  but  that  he  is  too  intellectual  and  has  an  excess 
of  mentality.     It  is  easier  for  words  to  be  poetical 

without  any  thought,  when  they  are  felt  merely  as 

sensuous  and  musical,  than  for  them  to,  remain  so 

I  when  they  convey  an  abstract  notion,  —  especially 

j    if  that  notion  be  a  tart  and  fri^d  sophism,  like 

i    that  of  the  couplet  just  quoted.     The  pyrotechnics 

of  the  intellect  then  take  the  place  of  the  glow  of 

sense,  and  the  artifice  of  thought  chills  the  pleasure 

we  might  have  taken  in  the  grace  of  expression. 

If  poetry  in  its  higher  reaches  is  more  philosophi- 
cal than  history,  because  it  presents  the  memorable 
types  of  men  and  things  apart  from  unmeaning  cir- 
cumstances, so  in  its  primary  substance  and  texture 
poetry  is  more  philosophical  than  prose  because  it 
is  nearer  to  our  immediate  experience.  Poetry  , 
breaks  up  the  trite  conceptions  designated  by  cur-  "i 
rent  words  into  the  sensuous  qualities  out  of  which 
those  conceptions  were  originally  put  together. 
We  name  what  we  conceive  and  believe  in,  not 
what  we  see ;  things,  not  images  j  souls,  not  voices 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  259 

and  silhouettes.  This  naming,  with  the  whole  edu- 
cation of  the  senses  which  it  accompanies,  sub- 
serves the  uses  of  life ;  in  order  to  thread  our  way 
through  the  labyrinth  of  objects  which  assault  us, 
we  must  make  a  great  selection  in  our  sensuous  ex- 
perience; half  of  what  we  see  and  hear  we  must 
pass  over  as  insignificant,  while  we  piece  out  the 
other  half  with  such  an  ideal  complement  as  is 
necessary  to  turn  it  into  a  fixed  and  well-ordered 
world.  This  labour  of  perception  and  understand- 
ing, this  spelling  of  the  material  meaning  of  expe- 
rience is  enshrined  in  our  work-a-day  language  and 
ideas ;  ideas  which  are  literally  poetic  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  ^^  made ''  (for  every  conception  in  an 
adult  mind  is  a  fiction),  but  which  are  at  the  same 
time  prosaic  because  they  are  made  economically, 
by  abstraction,  and  for  use. 

When  the  child  of  poetic  genius,  who  has  learned 
this  intellectual  and  utilitarian  language  in  the  cra- 
dle, goes  afield  and  gathers  for  himself  the  aspects 
of  Nature,  he  begins  to  encumber  his  mind  with 
the  many  living  impressions  which  the  intellect 
rejected,  and  which  the  language  of  the  intellect 
can  hardly  convey;  he  labours  with  his  nameless 
burden  of  perception,  and  wastes  himself  in  aim- 
less impulses  of  emotion  and  revery,  until  finally 
the  method  of  some  art  offers  a  vent  to  his  inspira- 
tion, or  to  such  part  of  it  as  can  survive  the  test  of 
time  and  the  discipline  of  expression. 


/I 


260  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

The  poet  retains  by  nature  the  innocence  of  the 
eye,  or  recovers  it  easily;  he  disintegrates  the  fic- 
tions of  common  perception  into  their  sensuous 
elements,  gathers  these  together  again  into  chance 
groups  as  the  accidents  of  his  environment  or  the 
affinities  of  his  temperament  may  conjoin  them; 
and  this  wealth  of  sensation  and  this  freedom  of 
fancy,  which  make  an  extraordinary  ferment  in  his 
ignorant  heart,  presently  bubble  over  into  some 
kind  of  utterance. 

The  fulness  and  sensuousnese  of  such  effusions 
bring  them  nearer  to  our  actual  perceptions  than 
common  discourse  could  come ;  yet  they  may  easily 
seem  remote,  overloaded,  and  obscure  to  those  accus- 
tomed to  think  entirely  in  symbols,  and  never  to  be 
interrupted  in  the  algebraic  rapidity  of  their  think- 
ing by  a  moment's  pause  and  examination  of  heart, 
nor  ever  to  plunge  for  a  moment  into  that  torrent 
of  sensation  and  imagery  over  which  the  bridge  of 
prosaic  associations  habitually  carries  us  safe  and 
dry  to  some  conventional  act.  How  slight  that 
bridge  commonly  is,  how  much  an  affair  of  trestles 
and  wire,  we  can  hardly  conceive  until  we  have 
trained  ourselves  to  an  extreme  sharpness  of  intro- 
spection. But  psychologists  have  discovered,  what 
laymen  generally  will  confess,  that  we  hurry  by 
the  procession  of  our  mental  images  as  we  do  by 
the  traffic  of  the  street,  intent  on  business,  gladly 
forgetting  the  noise  and  movement  of  the  scene. 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  261 

and  looking  only  for  the  corner  we  would  turn  or 
the  door  we  would  enter.  Yet  in  our  alertest 
moment  the  depths  of  the  soul  are  still  dreaming^ 
the  real  world  stands  drawn  in  bare  outline  against 
a  background  of  chaos  and  unrest.  Our  logical 
thoughts  dominate  experience  only  as  the  paral- 
lels and  meridians  make  a  checker-board  of  the 
sea.  They  guide  our  voyage  without  controlling 
the  waves,  which  toss  for  ever  in  spite  of  our  ability 
to  ride  over  them  to  our  chosen  ends.  Sanity  is  aj 
madness  put  to  good  uses ;  waking  life  is  a  dreaml 
controlled. 

Out  of  the  neglected  riches  of  this  dream  the 
poet  fetches  his  wares.  He  dips  into  the  chaos 
that  underlies  the  rational  shell  of  the  world  and 
brings  up  some  superfluous  image,  some  emotion 
dropped  by  the  way,  and  reattaches  it  to  the 
present  object ;  he  reinstates  things  unnecessary, 
he  emphasizes  things  ignored,  he  paints  in  again 
into  the  landscape  the  tints  which  the  intellect  has 
allowed  to  fade  from  it.  If  he  seems  sometimes 
to  obscure  a  fact,  it  is  only  because  he  is  restoring 
an  experience.  We  may  observe  this  process  in 
the  simplest  cases.  When  Ossian,  mentioning  the 
sun,  says  it  is  round  as  the  shield  of  his  fathers, 
the  expression  is  poetical.  Why  ?  (^ecause  he 
has  added  to  the  word  sun,  in  itself  sufficient  and 
unequivocal,  other  words,  unnecessary  for  practical 
clearness,  but  serving  to  restore  the  individuality 


262  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

of  his  perception  and  its  associations  in  Ms  mind.) 
There  is  no  square  sun  with  which  the  sun  he  is 
speaking  of  could  be  confused ;  to  stop  and  call  it 
round  is  a  luxury,  a  halting  in  the  sensation  for 
the  love  of  its  form.  And  to  go  on  to  tell  us,  what 
is  wholly  impertinent,  that  the  shield  of  his  fathers 
was  round  also,  is  to  invite  us  to  follow  the  chance 
wanderings  of  his  fancy,  to  give  us  a  little  glimpse 
of  the  stuffing  of  his  own  brain,  or,  we  might 
almost  say,  to  turn  over  the  pattern  of  his  em- 
broidery and  show  us  the  loose  threads  hanging 
out  on  the  wrong  side.  Such  an  escapade  disturbs 
and  interrupts  the  true  vision  of  the  object,  and 
a  great  poet,  rising  to  a  perfect  conception  of  the 
sun  and  forgetting  himself,  would  have  disdained 
to  make  it ;  but  it  has  a  romantic  and  pathological 
interest,  it  restores  an  experience,  and  is  in  that 
measure  poetical.  We  have  been  made  to  halt  at 
the  sensation,  and  to  penetrate  for  a  moment  into 
its  background  of  dream. 

But  it  is  not  only  thoughts  or  images  that  the 
poet  draws  in  this  way  from  the  store  of  his  ex- 
perience, to  clothe  the  bare  form  of  conventional 
objects:  he  often  adds  to  these  objects  a  more 
subtle  ornament,  drawn  from  the  same  source. 
For  the  first  element  which  the  intellect  rejects 
in  forming  its  ideas  of  things  is  the  emotion 
which  accompanies  the  perception;  and  this  emo- 
tion is  the  first  thing  the  poet  restores.     He  stops 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  ^  263 

at  the  image,  because  he  stops  to  enjoy.  He 
wanders  into  the  by-paths  of  association  because  the 
by-paths  are  delightful.  The  love  of  beauty  which 
made  him  give  measure  and  cadence  to  his  words, 
the  love  of  harmony  which  made  him  rhyme  them, 
reappear  in  his  imagination  and  make  him  select 
there  also  the  material  that  is  itself  beautiful,  or 
capable  of  assuming  beautiful  forms.  The  link 
that  binds  together  the  ideas,  sometimes  so  wide 
apart,  which  his  wit  assimilates,  is  most*  often  the 
link  of  emotion;  they  have  in  common  some  ele- 
ment of  beauty  or  of  horror. 

'  The  poet's  art  is  to  a  great  extent  the  art  of  inten- 
sifying emotions  by  assembling  the  scattered  objects 
that  naturally  arouse  them.  He  sees  the  affinities 
of  things  by  seeing  their  common  affinities  with  pas- 
sion. As  the  guiding  principle  of  practical  think- 
ing is  some  interest,  so  that  only  what  is  pertinent 
to  that  interest  is  selected  by  the  attention;  as 
the  guiding  principle  of  scientific  thinking  is  some 
connection  of  things  in  time  or  space,  or  some 
identity  of  law ;  so  in  poetic  thinking  the  guiding 
principle  is  often  a  mood  or  a  quality  of  senti- 
ment. By  this  union  of  disparate  things  having 
a  common  overtone  of  feeling,  the  feeling  is  itself 
evoked  in  all  its  strength ;  nay,  it  is  often  created 
for  the  first  time,  much  as  by  a  new  mixture  of 
old  pigments  Perugino  could  produce  the  unprece- 
dented limpidity  of  his  colour,  or  Titian  the  un- 


264  POETEY  AND   RELIGION 

r 

precedented  glow  of  his.  [  Poets  can  thus  arouse 
sentiments  finer  than  any  which  they  have  known, 
and  in  the  act  of  composition  become  discoverers 
of  new  realms  of  delightfulness  and  ^rief.  j  Ex- 
pression is  a  misleading  term  which  suggests  that 
something  previously  known  is  rendered  or  imi- 
tated ;  whereas  the  expression  is  itself  an  original 
fact,  the  values  of  which  are  then  referred  to  the 
thing  expressed,  much  as  the  honours  of  a  Chinese 
mandarin  -are  attributed  retroactively  to  his  par- 
ents. So  the  charm  which  a  poet,  by  his  art  of 
combining  images  and  shades  of  emotion,  casts  over 
a  scene  or  an  action,  is  attached  to  the  principal 
actor  in  it,  who  gets  the  benefit  of  the  setting 
furnished  him  by  a  well-stocked  mind. 

The  poet  is  himself  subject  to  this  illusion,  and 
a  great  part  of  what  is  called  poetry,  although  by 
no  means  the  best  part  of  it,  consists  in  this  sort 
of  idealization  by  proxy.  We  dye  the  world  of 
our  own  colour ;  by  a  pathetic  fallacy,  by  a  false 
projection  of  sentiment,  we  soak  Nature  with  our 
own  feeling,  and  then  celebrate  her  tender  sym- 
pathy with  our  moral  being.  This  aberration,  as 
we  see  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth,  is  not  incon- 
sistent with  a  high  development  of  both  the  facul- 
ties which  it  confuses, — I  mean  vision  and  feeling. 
On  the  contrary,  vision  and  feeling,  when  most 
abundant  and  original,  most  easily  present  them- 
selves in  this   undivided  form.      There  would  be 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  265 

need  of  a  force  of  intellect  which  poets  rarely 
possess  to  rationalize  their  inspiration  without  di- 
minishing its  volume :  and  if,  as  is  commonly  the 
case,  the  energy  of  the  dream  and  the  passion  in 
them  is  greater  than  that  of  the  reason,  and  they 
cannot  attain  true  propriety  and  supreme  beauty 
in  their  works,  they  can,  nevertheless,  fill  them  with 
lovely  images  and  a  fine  moral  spirit. 

The  pouring  forth  of  both  perceptive  and  emo- 
tional elements  in  their  mixed  and  indiscriminate 
form  gives  to  this  kind  of  imagination  the  direct- 
ness and  truth  which  sensuous  poetry  possesses 
on  a  lower  level.  The  outer  world  bathed  in 
the  hues  of  human  feeling,  the  inner  world  ex- 
pressed in  the  forms  of  things,  —  that  is  the 
primitive  condition  of  both  before  intelligence 
and  the  prosaic  classification  of  objects  have  ab- 
stracted them  and  assigned  them  to  their  respec- 
tive spheres.  Such  identifications,  on  which  a 
certain  kind  of  metaphysics  prides  itself  also, 
are  not  discoveries  of  profound  genius;  they  are 
exactly  like  the  observation  of  Ossian  that  the 
sun  is  round  and  that  the  shield  of  his  fathers 
was  round  too;  they  are  disintegrations  of  con- 
ventional objects,  so  that  the  original  associates  / 
of  our  perceptions  reappear ;  then  the  thing  and*/ 
the  emotion  which  chanced  to  be  simultaneous 
are  said  to  be  one,  and  we  return,  unless  a  better 
principle   of    organization   is   substituted  for    the 


266  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

principle  abandoned,  to  the  chaos  of  a  passive 
animal  consciousness,  where  all  is  mixed  together, 
projected  together,  and  felt  as  an  unutterable 
whole. 
,  The  pathetic  fallacy  is  a  return  to  that  early 
habit  of  thought  by  which  our  ancestors  peopled 
the  world  with  benevolent  and  malevolent  spirits  ; 
what  they  felt  in  the  presence  of  objects  they 
took  to  be  a  part  of  the  objects  themselves.  In 
Returning  to  this  natural  confusion,  poetry  does 
/  us  a  service  in  that  she  recalls  and  consecrates 
N  those  phases  of  our  experience  which,  as  useless 
^  \  to  the  understanding  of  material  reality,  we  are 
in  danger  of  forgetting  altogether.  Therein  is 
her  vitality,  for  she  pierces  to  the  quick  and 
shakes  us  out  of  our  servile  speech  and  imagina- 
tive poverty ;  she  reminds  us  of  all  we  have  felt, 
she  invites  us  even  to  dream  a  little,  to  nurse  the 
wonderful  spontaneous  creations  which  at  every 
waking  moment  we  are  snuffing  out  in  our  brain. 
And  the  indulgence  is  no  mere  momentary  pleas- 
ure; much  of  its  exuberance  clings  afterward  to 
our  ideas;  we  see  the  more  and  feel  the  more 
for  that  exercise ;  we  are  capable  of  finding  greater 
entertainment  in  the  common  aspects  of  Nature 
and  life.  When  the  veil  of  convention  is  once 
removed  from  our  eyes  by  the  poet,  we  are  better 
able  to  dominate  any  particular  experience  and,  as 
it  were,  to  change  its  scale,  now  losing  ourselves 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  267 

in  its  infinitesimal  texture,  now  in  its  infinite 
ramifications. 

*  If  the  function  of  poetry,  however,  did  not  go 
beyond  this  recovery  of  sensuous  and  imaginative 
freedom,  at  the  expense  of  disrupting  our  useful 
habits  of  thought,  we  might  be  grateful  to  it  for 
occasionally  relieving  our  numbness,  but  we  should 
have  to  admit  that  it  was  nothing  but  a  relaxation ; 
that  spiritual  discipline  was  not  to  be  gained  from 
it  in  any  degree,  but  must  be  sought  wholly  in 
that  intellectual  system  that  builds  the  science 
of  Nature  with  the  categories  of  prose.  So  con- 
ceived, poetry  would  deserve  the  judgment  passed 
by  Plato  on  all  the  arts  of  flattery  and  entertain- 
ment ;  it  might  be  crowned  as  delightful,  but  must 
be  either  banished  altogether  as  meretricious  or 
at  least  confined  to  a  few  forms  and  occasions 
where  it  might  do  little  harm.  The  judgment  of 
Plato  has  been  generally  condemned  by  philoso- 
phers, although  it  is  eminently  rational,  and  justi- 
fied by  the  simplest  principles  of  morals.  It  has 
been  adopted  instead,  although  unwittingly,  by 
the  practical  and  secular  part  of  mankind,  who 
look  upon  artists  and  poets  as  inefiicient  and  brain- 
sick people  under  whose  spell  it  would  be  a  serious 
calamity  to  fall,  although  they  may  be  called  in  on 
feast  days  as  an  ornament  and  luxury  together 
with  the  cooks,  hairdressers,  and  florists. 

Several  circumstances,  however,  might  suggest 


268  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

to  US  the  possibility  that  the  greatest-function  of 
poetry  may  be  still  to  find.  Plato,  while  condemn- 
ing Homer,  was  a  kind  of  poet  himself ;  his  quarrel 
with  the  followers  of  the  Muse  was  not  a  quarrel 
with  the  goddess ;  and  the  good  people  of  Philistia, 
distrustful  as  they  may  be  of  profane  art,  pay 
undoubting  honour  to  religion,  which  is  a  kind  of 
poetry  as  much  removed  from  their  sphere  as  the 
midnight  revels  upon  Mount  Citheron,  which,  to 
be  sure,  were  also  religious  in  their  inspiration. 
Why,  we  may  ask,  these  apparent  inconsistencies  ? 
Why  do  our  practical  men  make  room  for  religion 
in  the  background  of  their  world?  Why  did 
Plato,  after  banishing  the  poets,  poetize  the  uni- 
erse  in  his  prose?  Because  the  abstraction  by 
which  the  world  of  science  and  of  practice  is 
drawn  out  of  our  experience,  is  too  violent  to 
satisfy  even  the  thoughtless  and  vulgar;  the 
ideality  of  the  machine  we  call  Nature,  the  con- 
ventionality of  the  drama  we  call  the  world,  are  too 
glaring  not  to  be  somehow  perceived  by  all.  Each 
must  sometimes  fall  back  upon  the  soul ;  he  must 
challenge  this  apparition  with  the  thought  of  death ; 
he  must  ask  himself  for  the  mainspring  and  value 
of  his  life.  He  will  then  remember  his  stifled 
loves;  he  will  feel  that  only  his  illusions  have 
ever  given  him  a  sense  of  reality,  only  his  passions 
the  hope  and  the  vision  of  peace.  He  will  read 
himself  through  and  almost  gather  a  meaning  from 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  269 

his  experience ;  at  least  he  will  half  believe  that 
all  he  has  been  dealing  with  was  a  dream  and  a 
symbol,  and  raise  his  eyes  toward  the  truth  be- 
yond. <r— — 

This  plastic  moment  of  the  mind,  when  we  be- 
come aware  of  the  artificiality  and  inadequacy  of 
what  common  sense  perceives,  is  the  true  moment 
of  poetic  opportunity,  —  an  opportunity,  we  may 
hasten  to  confess,  which  is  generally  missed.  The 
strain  of  attention,  the  concentration  and  focussing 
of  thought  on  the  unfamiliar  immediacy  of  things, 
usually  brings  about  nothing  but  confusion.  We 
are  dazed,  we  are  filled  with  a  sense  of  unutterable 
things,  luminous  yet  indistinguishable,  many  yet 
one.  Instead  of  rising  to  imagination,  we  sink  into  1 — ' 
mysticism. 

To  accomplish  a  mystical  disintegration  is  not 
the  function  of  any  art ;  if  any  art  seems  to  accom- 
plish it,  the  effect  is  only  incidental,  being  involved, 
perhaps,  in  the  process  of  constructing  the  proper 
object  of  that  art,  as  we  might  cut  down  trees  and 
dig  them  up  by  the  roots  to  lay  the  foundations  of 
a  temple.  For  every  art  looks  to  the  building  up 
of  something.  And  just  because  the  world  built  up 
by  common  sense  and  natural  science  is  an  inad- 
equate world  (a  skeleton  which  needs  the  filling  of 
sensation  before  it  can  live),  therefore  the  moment 
when  we  realize  its  inadequacy  is  the  moment  when 
the  higher  arts  find  their  opportunity.     When  the 


270  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

world  is  shattered  to  bits  they  can  come  and  "  build 
it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire." 

The  great  function  of  poetry,  which  we  have  not 
yet  directly  mentioned,  is  precisely  this :  to  repair 
to  the  material  of  experience,  seizingjiold  of  the 
reality  of  sensation  and  fancy  beneath  the  surface 
ofconventional  ideas,  and  then  out  of  that  living 
but  indefinite  material  to  build  _new  siructures, 
richer,  finer,  fitter  to  the  primary  tendencies  of  our 

nature,     tv-nM^^Jtr^^J^f.   nltimntp   pnssibilif.iPa   of    the 

soul.  Our  descent  into  the  elements  of  our  being 
is  then  justified  by  our  subsequent  freer  ascent 
toward  its  goal;  we  revert  to  sense  only  to  find 
food  for  reason ;  we  destroy  conventions  only  to 
construct  ideals. 

Such  analysis  for  the   sake   of  creation  is  the 

essence   of   all   great   poetry.      Science   and  com- 

\     mon    sense    are    themselves   in    their   way    poets 

of  no  mean  order,  since  they  take   the  material 

j  )  of  experience  and  make  out  of  it  a  clear,  sym- 

1  /  metrical,  and  beautiful  world ;  the  very  propriety 

I  (   of  this   art,  however,  has   made  it  common.     Its 

figures  have  become  mere  rhetoric  and  its   meta- 

I       phors  prose.     Yet,  even  as  it  is,  a  scientific  and 

mathematical  vision  has  a  higher  beauty  than  the 

irrational  poetry  of  sensation  and  impulse,  which 

merely  tickles  the  brain,  like  liquor,  and  plays  upon 

our  random,  imaginative  lusts.    The  imagination  of 

\^  great  poet,  on  the  contrary,  is  as  orderly  as  that 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  271 

of  an  astronomer,  and  as  large;  he  has  the  natu- 
ralist's patience,  the  naturalist^s  love  of  detail  and 
eye  trained  to  see  fine  gradations  and  essential 
lines ;  he  knows  no  hurry  5  he  has  no  pose,  no  sense 
of  originality;  he  finds  his  effects  in  his  subject, 
and  his  subject  in  his  inevitable  world.  Resem- 
bling the  naturalist  in  all  this,  he  differs  from  him 
in  the  balance  of  his  interests;  the  poet  has  the 
concreter  mind;  his  visible  world  wears  all  its 
colours  and  retains  its  indwelling  passion  and  life. 
Instead  of  studying  in  experience  its  calculable 
elements,  he  studies  its  moral  values,  its  beauty, 
the  openings  it  offers  to  the  soul :  and  the  cosmos 
he  constructs  is  accordingly  an  ideal  theatre  for  the 
spirit  in  which  its  noblest  potential  drama  is 
enacted  and  its  destiny  resolved. 

This  supreme  function  of  poetry  is  only  the  con- 
summation of  the  method  by  which  words  and 
imagery  are  transformed  into  verse.  As  verse 
breaks  up  the  prosaic  order  of  syllables  and  sub- 
jects them  to  a  recognizable  and  pleasing  measure, 
so  poetry  breaks  up  the  whole  prosaic  picture  of 
experience  to  introduce  into  it  a  rhythm  more  con- 
genial and  intelligible  to  the  mind.  And  in  both 
these  cases  the  operation  is  essentially  the  same  as 
that  by  which,  in  an  intermediate  sphere,  the 
images  rejected  by  practical  thought,  and  the  emo- 
tions ignored  by  it,  are  so  marshalled  as  to  fill  the 
mind  with  a  truer  and  intenser  consciousness  of  its 


272  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

memorable  experience.  The  poetry  of  fancy,  of 
observation,  and  of  passion  moves  on  this  inter- 
mediate level ;  the  poetry  of  mere  sound  and  virtu- 
osity is  confined  to  the  lower  sphere;  and  the 
highest  is  reserved  for  the  poetry  of  the  creative 
reason.  But  one  principle  is  present  throughout, — 
the  principle  of  Beauty,  —  the  art  of  assimilating 
phenomena,  whether  words,  images,  emotions,  or 
systems  of  ideas,  to  the  deeper  innate  cravings  of 
the  mind. 

Let  us  now  dwell  a  little  on  this  higher  function 
of  poetry  and  try  to  distinguish  some  of  its 
phases. 

The  creation  of  characters  is  what  many  of  us 
might  at  first  be  tempted  to  regard  as  the  supreme 
triumph  of  the  imagination.  If  we  abstract,  how- 
ever, from  our  personal  tastes  and  look  at  the 
matter  in  its  human  and  logical  relations,  we  shall 
see,  I  think,  that  the  construction  of  characters  is 
not  the  ultimate  task  of  poetic  fiction.  A  character 
can  never  be  exhaustive  of  our  materials:  for  it 
exists  by  its  idiosyncrasy,  by  its  contrast  with 
other  natures,  by  its  development  of  one  side,  and 
one  side  only,  of  our  native  capacities.  It  is,  there- 
fore, not  by  characterization  as  such  that  the  ulti- 
mate message  can  be  rendered.  The  poet  can  put 
only  a  part  of  himself  into  any  of  his  heroes,  but 
he  must  put  the  whole  into  his  noblest  work.  A 
character  is  accordingly  only  a  fragmentary  unity ; 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  POETRY      273 

fragmentary  in  respect  to  its  origin,  —  since  it  is 
conceived  by  enlargement,  so  to  speak,  of  a  part  of 
our  own  being  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest,  —  and 
fragmentary  in  respect  to  the  object  it  presents, 
since  a  character  must  live  in  an  environment  and 
be  appreciated  by  contrast  and  by  the   sense  of 

derivation.     Not  the  character,  but  its  effects  and 

—— — — — — -^— — " 

causes,  is  the  truly  interesting  thing.  Thus  in 
master  poets,  like  Homer  and  Dante,  the  char- 
acters, although  well  drawn,  are  subordinate  to 
the  total  movement  and  meaning  of  the  scene. 
There  is  indeed  something  pitiful,  something  comic, 
in  any  comprehended  soul ;  souls,  like  other  things, 
are  only  definable  by  their  limitations.  We  feel  in- 
stinctively that  it  would  be  insulting  to  speak  of 
any  man  to  his  face  as  we  should  speak  of  him  in 
his  absence,  even  if  what  we  say  is  in  the  way 
of  praise  :  for  absent  he  is  a  character  understood, 
but  present  he  is  a  force  respected. 

In  the  construction  of  ideal  characters,  then,  the 
imagination  is  busy  with  material,  —  particular 
actions  and  thoughts,  —  which  suggest  their  uni- 
fication in  persons ;  but  the  characters  thus  con- 
ceived can  hardly  be  adequate  to  the  profusion  of 
our  observations,  nor  exhaustive,  when  all  person- 
alities are  taken  together,  of  the  interest  of  c*ir 
lives.  Characters  are  initially  imbedded  in  life, 
as  the  gods  themselves  are  originally  imbedded 
in  Nature.     Poetry  must,  therefore,  to  render  all 


/ 


274  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

reality,  render  also  the  background  of  its  figures, 
and  the  events  that  condition  their  acts.  We 
must  place  them  in  that  indispensable  environ- 
ment which  the  landscape  furnishes  to  the  eye  and 
the  social  medium  to  the  emotions. 

The  visible  landscape  is  not  a  proper  object  for 
poetry.  Its  elements,  and  especially  the  emotional 
stimulation  which  it  gives,  may  be  suggested  or  ex- 
pressed in  verse ;  but  landscape  is  not  thereby  rep- 
resented in  its  proper  form  ;  it  appears  only  as  an 
element  and  associate  of  moral  unities.  Painting, 
architecture,  and  gardening,  with  the  art  of  stage 
setting,  have  the  visible  landscape  for  their  object, 
and  to  those  arts  we  may  leave  it.  But  there  is  a 
sort  of  landscape  larger  than  the  visible,  which  es- 
capes the  synthesis  of  the  eye ;  it  is  present  to  that 
topographical  sense  by  which  we  always  live  in  the 
consciousness  that  there  is  a  sea,  that  there  are 
mountains,  that  the  sky  is  above  us,  even  when  we 
do  not  see  it,  and  that  the  tribes  of  men,  with  their 
different  degrees  of  blamelessness,  are  scattered 
over  the  broad-backed  earth.  This  cosmic  land- 
scape poetry  alone  can  render,  and  it  is  no  small 
part  of  the  art  to  awaken  the  sense  of  it  at  the 
right  moment,  so  that  the  object  that  occupies 
tlie  centre  of  vision  may  be  seen  in  its  true  lights, 
coloured  by  its  wider  associations,  and  dignified  by 
its  felt  affinities  to  things  permanent  and  great. 
As  the  Italian  masters  were  wont  not  to  paint  their 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  275 

groups  of  saints  about  the  Virgin  without  enlarging 
the  canvas,  so  as  to  render  a  broad  piece  of  sky, 
some  mountains  and  rivers,  and  nearer,  perhaps, 
some  decorative  pile;  so  the  poet  of  larger  mind 
envelops  his  characters  in  the  atmosphere  of  Nature 
and  history,  and  keeps  us  constantly  aware  of  the 
world  in  which  they  move. 

The  distinction  of  a  poet  —  the  dignity  and 
humanity  of  his  thought  —  can  be  measured  by 
nothing,  perhaps,  so  well  as  by  the  diameter  of  the 
world  in  which  he  lives;  if  he  is  supreme,  his 
vision,  like  Dante's,  always  stretches  to  the  stars. 
And  Virgil,  a  supreme  poet  sometimes  unjustly 
belittled,  shows  us  the  same  thing  in  another  form ; 
his  landscape  is  the  Eoman  universe,  his  theme  the 
sacred  springs  of  Eoman  greatness  in  piety,  con- 
stancy, and  law.  He  has  not  written  a  line  in  f  or- 
getf  ulness  that  he  was  a  Eoman  ;  he  loves  country 
life  and  its  labours  because  he  sees  in  it  the  origin 
and  bulwark  of  civic  greatness  ;  he  honours  tradition 
because  it  gives  perspective  and  momentum  to  the 
history  that  ensues ;  he  invokes  the  gods,  because 
they  are  symbols  of  the  physical  and  moral  forces 
by  which  Eome  struggled  to  dominion. 

Almost  every  classic  poet  has  the  topographical 
sense ;  he  swarms  with  proper  names  and  allusions 
to  history  and  fable  ;  if  an  epithet  is  to  be  thrown 
in  anywhere  to  fill  up  the  measure  of  a  line,  he 
chooses   instinctively   an  appellation   of  place  or 


276  POETRY  AND  RELIGION 

^  family ;  his  wine  is  not  red,  but  Samian  ;  his  gorges 
\  are  not  deep,  but  are  the  gorges  of  Haemus ;  his 
songs  are  not  sweet,  but  Pierian.  We  may  deride 
their  practice  as  conventional,  but  they  could  far 
more  justly  deride  ours  as  insignificant.  Conven- 
tions do  not  arise  without  some  reason,  and  genius 
will  know  how  to  rise  above  them  by  a  fresh  ap- 
preciation of  their  Tightness,  and  will  feel  no 
temptation  to  overturn  them  in  favour  of  per- 
sonal whimsies.  The  ancients  found  poetry  not 
so  much  in  sensible  accidents  as  in  essential  forms 
and  noble  associations ;  and  this  fact  marks  very 
clearly  their  superior  education.  They  dominated 
the  world  as  we  no  longer  dominate  it,  and  lived,  as 
we  are  too  distracted  to  live,  in  the  presence  of  the 
rational  and  the  important. 

A  physical  and  historical  background,  however, 
is  of  little  moment  to  the  poet  in  comparison  with 
that  other  environment  of  his  characters,  —  the 
dramatic  situations  in  which  they  are  involved. 
The  substance  of  poetry  is,  after_all^jmot.iQji;  and 
if  the  intellectual  emotion  of  comprehension  and 
the  mimetic  one  of  impersonation  are  massive, 
they  are  not  so  intense  as  the  appetites  and  other 
transitive  emotions  of  life;  the  passions  are  the 
chief  basis  of  all  interests,  even  the  most  ideal, 
and  the  passions  are  seldom  brought  into  play 
except  by  the  contact  of  man  with  man.  The 
various  forms  of  love  and  hate  are  only  possible 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  277 

in  society,  and  to  imagine  occasions  in  which,  these 
feelings  may  manifest  all  their  inward  vitality  is 
the  poet's  function,  —  one  in  which  he  follows  the 
fancy  of  every  child,  who  puffs  himself  out  in  his 
day-dreams  into  an  endless  variety  of  heroes  and 
lovers.  The  thrilling  adventures  which  he  craves 
demand  an  appropriate  theatre;  the  glorious  emo- 
tions with  which  he  bubbles  over  must  at  all  haz- 
ards find  or  feign  their  correlative  objects. 

But  the  passions  are  naturally  blind,  and  the 
poverty  of  the  imagination,  when  left  alone,  is 
absolute.  The  passions  may  ferment  as  they  will, 
they  never  can  breed  an  idea  out  of  their  own 
energy.  This  idea  must  be  furnished  by  the 
senses,  by  outward  experience,  else  the  hunger 
of  the  soul  will  gnaw  its  own  emptiness  for  ever. 
Where  the  seed  of  sensation  has  once  fallen,  how- 
ever, the  growth,  variations,  and  exuberance  of 
fancy  may  be  unlimited.  Only  we  still  observe 
(as  in  the  child,  in  dreams,  and  in  the  poetry  of 
ignorant  or  mystical  poets)  that  the  intensity  of 
inwardly  generated  visions  does  not  involve  any 
real  increase  in  their  scope  or  dignity.  The  inex- 
perienced mind  remains  a  thin  mind,  no  matter 
how  much  its  vapours  may  be  heated  and  blown 
about  by  natural  passion.  It  was  a  capital  error 
in  Fichte  and  Schopenhauer  to  assign  essential 
fertility  to  the  will  in  the  creation  of  ideas.  They 
mistook,  as   human  nature  will  do,  even  when  at 


278  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

times  it  professes  pessimism,  an  ideal  for  a  real- 
ity: and  because  they  saw  how  much  the  will 
clings  to  its  objects,  how  it  selects  and  magnifies 
them,  they  imagined  that  it  could  breed  them  out 
of  itself.  A  man  who  thinks  clearly  will  see  that 
such  self-determination  of  a  will  is  inconceivable, 
since  what  has  no  external  relation  and  no  diver- 
sity of  structure  cannot  of  itself  acquire  diversity 
of  functions.  Such  inconceivability,  of  course,  need 
not  seem  a  great  objection  to  a  man  of  impassioned 
inspiration;  he  may  even  claim  a  certain  consist- 
ency in  positing,  on  the  strength  of  his  preference, 
the  inconceivable  to  be  a  truth. 

The  alleged  fertility  of  the  will  is,  however,  dis- 
proved by  experience,  from  which  metaphysics  must 
in  the  end  draw  its  analogies  and  plausibility. 
The  passions  discover,  they  do  not  create,  their 
occasions;  a  fact  which  is  patent  when  we  observe 
how  they  seize  upon  what  objects  they  find,  and 
how  reversible,  contingent,  and  transferable  the 
emotions  are  in  respect  to  their  objects.  A  doll 
will  be  loved  instead  of  a  child,  a  child  instead  of 
a  lover,  God  instead  of  everything.  The  differen- 
tiation of  the  passions,  as  far  as  consciousness  is 
concerned,  depends  on  the  variety  of  the  objects 
of  experience,  —  that  is,  on  the  differentiation  of 
the  senses  and  of  the  environment  which  stimu- 
lates them. 

When  the  "infinite"  spirit  enters  the  human 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  POETRY      279 

body,  it  is  determined  to  certain  limited  forms 
of  life  by  the  organs  which  it  wears;  and  its 
blank  potentiality  becomes  actual  in  thought  and 
deed,  according  to  the  fortunes  and  relations  of 
its  organism.  The  ripeness  of  the  passions  may 
thus  precede  the  information  of  the  mind  and 
lead  to  groping  in  by-paths  without  issue ;  a  phe- 
nomenon which  appears  not  only  in  the  obscure 
individual  whose  abnormalities  the  world  ignores, 
but  also  in  the  starved,  half-educated  genius  that 
pours  the  whole  fire  of  his  soul  into  trivial  arts 
or  grotesque  superstitions.  The  hysterical  forms 
of  music  and  religion  are  the  refuge  of  an  ideal- 
ism that  has  lost  its  way ;  the  waste  and  failures 
of  life  flow  largely  in  those  channels.  The  carnal 
temptations  of  youth  are  incidents  of  the  same 
maladaptation,  when  passions  assert  themselves 
before  the  conventional  order  of  society  can  allow 
them  physical  satisfaction,  and  long  before  philos- 
ophy or  religion  can  hope  to  transform  them  into 
fuel  for  its  own  sacrificial  flames. 

Hence  flows  the  greatest  opportunity  of  fiction. 
We  have,  in  a  sense,  an  infinite  will ;  but  we  have 
a  limited  experience,  an  experience  sadly  inadequate 
to  exercise  that  will  either  in  its  purity  or  its  \ 
strength.  To  give  form  to  our  capacities  nothing  ' 
is  required  but  the  appropriate  occasion;  this  the 
poet,  studying  the  world,  will  construct  for  us  out 
of  the  materials  of  his  observations.     He  will  in- 


280  POETKY   AND   KELIGION 

volve  us  in  scenes  which  lie  beyond  the  narrow 
lane  of  our  daily  ploddings;  he  will  place  us  in 
the  presence  of  important  events,  that  we  may  feel 
our  spirit  rise  momentarily  to  the  height  of  his 
great  argument.  The  possibilities  of  love  or  glory, 
of  intrigue  and  perplexity,  will  be  opened  up  be- 
fore us ;  if  he  gives  us  a  good  plot,  we  can  readily 
furnish  the  characters,  because  each  of  them  will  be 
the  realization  of  some  stunted  potential  self  of 
our  own.  It  is  by  the  plot,  then,  that  the  char- 
acters will  be  vivified,  because  it  is  by  the  plot  that 
our  own  character  will  be  expanded  into  its  latent 
possibilities. 

The  description  of  an  alien  character  can  serve 
this  purpose  only  very  imperfectly ;  but  the  presen- 
tation of  the  circumstances  in  which  that  character 
manifests  itself  will  make  description  unneces- 
sary, since  our  instinct  will  supply  all  that  is  requi- 
site for  the  impersonation.  Thus  it  seems  that 
Aristotle  was  justified  in  making  the  plot  the  chief 
element  in  fiction:  for  it  is  by  virtue  of  the  plot 
that  the  characters  live,  or,  rather,  that  we  live  in 
them,  and  by  virtue  of  the  plot  accordingly  that 
our  soul  rises  to  that  imaginative  activity  by  which 
we  tend  at  once  to  escape  from  the  personal  life 
and  to  realize  its  ideal.  This  idealization  is,  of 
course,  partial  and  merely  relative  to  the  particular 
adventure  in  which  we  imagine  ourselves  engaged. 
But  in  some  single  direction  our  will  finds  self- 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  281 

expression,  and  understands  itself;  runs  through 
the  career  which  it  ignorantly  coveted,  and  gathers 
the  fruits  and  the  lesson  of  that  enterprise. 

This  is  the  essence  of  tragedy :  the  sense  of  the  / 
finished  life,  of  the  will  fulfilled  and  enlightened :  ? 
that  purging  of  the  mind  so  much  debated  upon, 
which  relieves  us  of  pent-up  energies,  transfers  our 
feelings  to  a  greater  object,  and  thus  justifies  and 
entertains  our  dumb  passions,  detaching  them  at 
the  same  time  for  a  moment  from  their  accidental 
occasions  in  our  earthly  life.  An  episode,  however 
lurid,  is  not  a  tragedy  in  this  nobler  sense,  because 
it  does  not  work  itself  out  to  the  end ;  it  pleases 
without  satisfying,  or  shocks  without  enlightening. 
This  enlightenment,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  not  a 
matter  of  theory  or  of  moral  maxims ;  the  enlight- 
enment by  which  tragedy  is  made  sublime  is  a 
glimpse  into  the  ultimate  destinies  of  our  will. 
This  discovery  need  not  be  an  ethical  gain  —  Mac- 
beth and  Othello  attain  it  as  much  as  Brutus  and 
Hamlet  —  it  may  serve  to  accentuate  despair,  or 
cruelty,  or  indifference,  or  merely  to  fill  the  imagi- 
nation for  a  moment  without  much  affecting  the 
permanent  tone  of  the  mind.  But  without  such  a 
glimpse  of  the  goal  of  a  passion  the  passion  has  not 
been  adequately  read,  and  the  fiction  has  served  to 
amuse  us  without  really  enlarging  the  frontiers  of 
our  ideal  experience.  Memory  and  emotion  have 
been  played  upon,  but  imagination  has  not  brought 
anything  new  to  the  light. 


282  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

The  dramatic  situation,  however,  gives  us  the 
environment  of  a  single  passion,  of  life  in  one  of 
its  particular  phases ;  and  although  a  passion,  like 
Eomeo's  love,  may  seem  to  devour  the  whole  soul, 
and  its  fortunes  may  seem  to  be  identical  with  those 
of  the  man,  yet  much  of  the  man,  and  the  best  part 
of  him,  goes  by  the  board  in  such  a  simplification. 
If  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  for  example,  had  met  in 
his  youth  with  Romeo's  fate,  his  end  would  have 
been  no  more  ideally  tragic  than  if  he  had  died  at 
eighteen  of  a  fever ;  we  should  be  touched  rather 
by  the  pathos  of  what  he  had  missed,  than  by  the 
sublimity  of  what  he  had  experienced.  A  passion 
like  Romeo's,  compared  with  the  ideal  scope  of 
human  thought  and  emotion,  is  a  thin  dream,  a 
pathological  crisis. 

Accordingly  Aristophanes,  remembering  the  orig- 
inal religious  and  political  functions  of  tragedy, 
blushes  to  see  upon  the  boards  a  woman  in  love. 
And  we  should  readily  agree  with  him,  but  for  two 
reasons,  —  one,  that  we  abstract  too  much,  in  our 
demands  upon  art,  from  nobility  of  mind,  and  from 
the  thought  of  totality  and  proportion;  the  other, 
that  we  have  learned  to  look  for  a  symbolic  meaning 
in  detached  episodes,  and  to  accept  the  incidental 
emotions  they  cause,  because  of  their  violence  and 
our  absorption  in  them,  as  in  some  sense  sacra- 
mental and  representative  of  the  whole.  Thus  the 
picture  of  an  unmeaning  passion,  of  a  crime  with- 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  POETRY       283 

out  an  issue,  does  not  appear  to  our  romantic  appre- 
liension  as  the  sorry  farce  it  is,  but  rather  as  a  true 
tragedy.  Some  have  lost  even  the  capacity  to  con- 
ceive of  a  true  tragedy,  because  they  have  no  idea 
of  a  cosmic  order,  of  general  laws  of  life,  or  of  an 
impersonal  religion.  They  measure  the  profundity 
of  feeling  by  its  intensity,  not  by  its  justifying 
relations ;  and  in  the  radical  disintegration  of  their 
spirit,  the  more  they  are  devoured  the  more  they 
fancy  themselves  fed.  But  the  majority  of  us 
retain  some  sense  of  a  meaning  in  our  joys  and 
sorrows,  and  even  if  we  cannot  pierce  to  their  ulti- 
mate object,  we  feel  that  what  absorbs  us  here  and 
now  has  a  merely  borrowed  or  deputed  power ;  that 
it  is  a  symbol  and  foretaste  of  all  reality  speaking 
to  the  whole  soul.  At  the  same  time  our  intelli- 
gence is  too  confused  to  give  us  any  picture  of 
that  reality,  and  our  will  too  feeble  to  marshal  our 
disorganized  loves  into  a  religion  consistent  with 
itself  and  harmonious  with  the  comprehended  uni- 
verse. A  rational  ideal  eludes  us,  and  we  are  the 
more  inclined  to  plunge  into  mysticism. 
j  Nevertheless,  the  function  of  poetry,  like  that  of 
Jicience,  can  only  be  fulfilled  by  the  conception  of 
^harmonies  that  become  clearer  as  they  grow  richer. 
As  the  chance  note  that  comes  to  be  supported  by 
a  melody  becomes  in  that  melody  determinate  and 
necessary,  and  as  the  melody,  when  woven  into  a 
harmony,  is  explicated  in  that  harmony  and  fixed 


284  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

beyond  recall ;  so  the  single  emotion,  the  fortuitous 
dream,  launched  by  the  poet  into  the  world  of 
recognizable  and  immortal  forms,  looks  in  that 
world  for  its  ideal  supports  and  affinities.  It 
must  find  them  or  else  be  blown  back  among  the 
ghosts.  The  highest  ideality  is  the  comprehension 
of  the  reaL-,  Poetry  is  not  at  its  best  when  it 
depicts  a  further  possible  experience,  but  when 
it  initiates  us,  by  feigning  something  which  as  an 
experience  is  impossible,  into  the  meaning  of  the 
experience  which  we  have  actually  had. 

The  highest  example  of  this  kind  of  poetry  is 
religion ;  and  although  disfigured  and  misunderstood 
by  the  simplicity  of  men  who  believe  in  it  without 
being  capable  of  that  imaginative  interpretation 
of  life  in  which  its  truth  consists,  yet  this  religion 
is  even  then  often  beneficent,  because  it  colours  life 
harmoniously  with  the  ideal.  Religion  may  falsely' 
represent  the  ideal  as  a  reality,  but  we  must  re- 
member that  the  ideal,  if  not  so  represented,  would 
be  despised  by  the  majority  of  men,  who  cannot 
understand  that  the  value  of  things  is  moral,  and 
who  therefore  attribute  to  what  is  moral  a  natural 
existence,  thinking  thus  to  vindicate  its  importance 
and  value.  But  value  lies  in  meaning,  not  in  subt 
stance ;  in  the  ideal  which  things  approach,  not  in 
the  energy  which  they  embody. 
^Mi^IChe  highest  poetry,  then,  is  not  that  of  the 
versifiers,  but  that  of  the  prophets,  or  of  such  poets 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF  POETRY  285 

as.  interpret  verbally  the  visions  which  the  prophets 
have  rendered_in„.action  and  sentiment  rather  than 
in  adequate  words.  That  the  intuitions  of  religion 
are  poetical,  and  that  in  such  intuitions  poetry- 
has  its  ultimate  function,  are  truths  of  which  both 
religion  and'poetry  become  more  conscious  the  more 
they  advance  in  refinement  and  profundity.  A 
crude  and  superficial  theology  may  confuse  God 
with  the  thunder,  the  mountains,  the  heavenly 
bodies,  or  the  whole  universe ;  but  when  we  pass 
from  these  easy  identifications  to  a  religion  that 
has  taken  root  in  history  and  in  the  hearts  of  men, 
and  has  come  to  flower,  we  find  its  objects  and  its 
dogmas  purely  ideal,  transparent  expressions  of 
moral  experience  and  perfect  counterparts  of 
human  needs.  The  evidence  of  history  or  of  the 
senses  is  left  far  behind  and  never  thought  of; 
the  evidence  of  the  heart,  the  value  of  the  idea, 
are  alone  regarded. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  doctrine  of  transubstantia- 
tion.  A  metaphor  here  is  the  basis  of  a  dogma, 
because  the  dogma  rises  to  the  same  subtle  region 
as  the  metaphor,  and  gathers  its  sap  from  the  same 
soil  of  emotion.  Keligion  has  here  rediscovered  its 
affinity  with  poetry,  and  in  insisting  on  the  truth 
of  its  mystery  it  unconsciously  vindicates  the  ideal- 
ity of  its  truth.  Under  the  accidents  of  bread  and 
wine  lies,  says  the  dogma,  the  substance  of  Christ's 
body,  blood,  and  divinity.     What  is  that  but  to 


286  POETRY  AND   RELIGION 

treat  facts  as  an  appearance,  and  their  ideal  import 
as  a  reality  ?    And  to  do  this  is  the  very  essence"" 
of  poetry,  for  which  everything  visible  is  aTsacra;:^ 
ment  —  an  outward  sign  of  that  inward  grace  for 
which  the  soul  is  thirsting. 

In  this  same  manner,  where  poetry  rises  from  its 
elementary  and  detached  expressions  in  rhythm, 
euphuism,  characterization,  and  story-telling,  and 
comes  to  the  consciousness  of  its  highest  fur^^g- 
tion^_  that  of  portraying  the  ideals  of  experience 
and  destiny,  then  the  poet  becomes  a^are  that 
he  is  essentially  a  prophet,  and  either  devotes 
himself,  like  Homer  or  Dante,  to  the  loving  ex- 
pression of  the  religion  that  exists,  or  like  Lucre- 
tius or  Wordsworth,  to  the  heralding  of  one  which 
he  believes  to  be  possible.  Such  poets  are  aware 
of  their  highest  mission ;  others,  whatever  the 
energy  of  their  genius,  have  not  conceived  their 
ultimate  function  as  poets.  They  have  been  will- 
ing to  leave  their  world  ugly  as  a  whole,  after  stuf- 
fing it  with  a  sufficient  profusion  of  beauties.  Their 
contemporaries,  their  fellow-countrymen  for  many  . 
generations,  may  not  perceive  this  defect,  because 
they  are  naturally  even  less  able  than  the  poet 
himself  to  understand  the  necessity  of  so  large  a 
harmony.  If  he  is  short-sighted,  they  are  blind, 
and  his  poetic  world  may  seem  to  them  sublime  in 
its  significance,  because  it  may  suggest  some  par- 
tial lifting  of  their  daily  burdens  and  some  partial 
idealization  of  their  incoherent  thoughts. 


THE  ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  287 

Such  insensibility  to  the  highest  poetry  is  no  more 
extraordinary  than  the  corresponding  indifference  to 
the  highest  religion;  nobility  and  excellence,  how- 
ever, are  not  dependent  on  the  suffrage  of  half-baked 
men,  but  on  the  original  disposition  of  the  clay  and 
the  potter ;  I  mean  on  the  conditions  of  the  art  and 
the  ideal  capacities  of  human  nature.  Just  as  a 
note  is  better  than  a  noise  because,  its  beats  being 
regular,  the  ear  and  brain  can  react  with  pleasure 
on  that  regularity,  so  all  the  stages  of  harmony  are 
better  than  the  confusion  out  of  which  they  come, 
because  the  soul  that  perceives  that  harmony  wel- 
comes it  as  the  fufilment  of  her  natural  ends.  The 
Pythagoreans  were  therefore  right  when  they  made 
number  the  essence  of  the  knowable  world,  and 
Plato  was  right  when  he  said  harmony  was  the 
first  condition  of  the  highest  good.  The  good  man 
is  a  poet  whose  syllables  are  deeds  and  make  a 
harmony  in  Nature.  The  poet  is  a  rebuilder  of 
the  imagination,  to  make  a  harmony  in  that.  And 
he  is  not  a  complete  poet  if  his  whole  imagination 
is  not  attuned  and  his  whole  experience  composed 
into  a  single  symphony. 

For  his  complete  equipment,  then,  it  is  necessary, 
in  the  first  place,  that  he  sing;  that  his  voice  be 
pure  and  well  pitched,  and  that  his  numbers  flow ; 
then,  at  a  higher  stage,  his  images  must  fit  with 
one  another ;  he  must  be  euphuistic,  colouring  his 
thoughts  with  many  reflected  lights  of  memory  and 


288  POETRY   AND    RELIGION 

suggestion,  so  that  their  harmony  may  be  rich  and 
profound;  again,  at  a  higher  stage,  he  must  be 
sensuous  and  free,  that  is,  he  must  build  up  his 
world  with  the  primary  elements  of  experience,  not 
with  the  conventions  of  common  sense  or  intelli- 
gence ;  he  must  draw  the  whole  soul  into  his  har- 
monies, even  if  in  doing  so  he  disintegrates  the 
partial  systematizations  of  experience  made  by  ab- 
stract science  in  the  categories  of  prose.  But  finally, 
this  disintegration  must  not  leave  the  poet  weltering 
in  a  chaos  of  sense  and  passion  ;  it  must  be  merely 
the  ploughing  of  the  ground  before  a  new  harvest, 
the  kneading  of  the  clay  before  the  modelling  of 
a  more  perfect  form.  The  expression  of  emotion 
should  be  rationalized  by  derivation  from  char- 
acter and  by  reference  to  the  real  objects  that 
arouse  it  —  to  Nature,  to  history,  and  to  the  uni- 
verse of  truth ;  the  experience  imagined  should  be 
conceived  as  a  destiny,  governed  by  principles,  and 
issuing  in  the  discipline  and  enlightenment  of  the 
will.  In  this  way  alone  can  poetry  become  an 
interpretation  of  life  and  not  merely  an  irrelevant 
excursion  into  the  realm  of  fancy,  multiplying  our 

J  images  without  purpose,  and  distracting  us  from 

lour  business  without  spiritual  gain. 

'  If  we  may  then  define  poetry,  not  in  the  formal 
sense  of  giving  the  minimum  of  what  may  be  called 
by  that  name,  but  in  the  ideal  sense  of  determining 
the  goal  which  it  approaches  and  the  achievement 


THE   ELEMENTS   OF   POETRY  289 

in  which  all  its  principles  would  be  fulfilled,  we 
may  say  that  poetry  is  metrical  and  euphuistic  dis- 
course, expressing  thought  which  is  both  sensuous 
and  ideal. 

Siich  is  poetry  as  a  literary  form ;  but  if  we  drop 
the  limitation  to  verbal  expression,  and  think  of 
poetry  as  that  subtle  fire  and  inward  light  which 
seems  at  times  to  shine  through  the  world  and 
to  touch  the  images  in  our  minds  with  ineffable 
beauty,  then  poetry  is  a  momentary  harmony  in 
the  soul  amid  stagnation  or  conflict,  —  a  glimpse 
ol  ..the  divine  and  an  incitation  to  a  religious 
life^ 

Religion  is  poetry  become  the  guide  of  life, 
poetry  substituted  for  science  or  supervening  upon 
it  as  an  approach  to  the  highest  reality.  Poetry 
is  religion  allowed  to  drift,  left  without  points  of 
application  in  conduct  and  without  an  expression 
in  worship  and  dogma;  it  is  religion  without  prac- 
tical ef&cacy  and  without  metaphysical  illusion. 
The  ground  of  this  abstractness  of  poetry,  how- 
ever, is  usually  only  its  narrow  scope ;  a  poet  who 
plays  with  an  idea  for  half  an  hour,  or  constructs 
a  character  to  which  he  gives  no  profound  moral 
significance,  forgets  his  own  thought,  or  remembers 
it  only  as  a  fiction  of  his  leisure,  because  he  has 
not  dug  his  well  deep  enough  to  tap  the  subterra- 
neous springs  of  his  own  life.  But  when  the  poet 
enlarges  his  theatre  and  puts  into  his  rhapsodies 


290  POETRY   AND   RELIGION 

the  true  visions  of  his  people  and  of  his  soul,  his 
poetry  is  the  n^ILS^C^SiaitittH  nf  3hr  ^ft^pp^t  convic- 
tions, and  contains  the  whole  truth  of  his  religion. 
What  the  religion  of  the  vulgar  adds  to  the  poet's 
is  simply  the  inertia  of  their  limited  apprehension, 
which  takes  literally  what  he  meant  ideally,  and 
degrades  into  a  false  extension  of  this  world  on  its 
own  level  wJiat  in  his  mind  was  a  true  interpre- 
tation of  it  upon  a  moral  plane. 

This  higher  plane  is  the  sphere  of   significant 
imagination,  of  relevant  fiction,  of  idealism  become 

,  the  interpretation  of  the  reality  it  leaves  behind. 
Poetry  raised  to  its  highest  power  is  then  identical 

!  with  religion  grasped  in  its  inmost  truth ;  at  their 

I  point  of  union  both  reach  their  utmost  purity  and 
Ibeneficence,  for  then  poetry  loses  its  frivolity  and 

I  ceases  to  demoralize,  while  religion  surrenders  its 

i  illusions  and  ceases  to  deceive. 


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